


Nine Baudelaires, Part One

by sqmmie



Series: Nine Baudelaires AU [1]
Category: A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004), A Series of Unfortunate Events (TV), A Series of Unfortunate Events - Lemony Snicket
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Sibling Bonding, Sibling Rivalry, Siblings, also the kids all get weapons and just absolutely obliterate olaf, bea i is alive because i say so
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-16
Updated: 2019-09-18
Packaged: 2020-03-26 12:33:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 31
Words: 101,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19005901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sqmmie/pseuds/sqmmie
Summary: The nine lives of the Baudelaire children—and I mean this literally, because there were nine of them, six girls and three boys—were rife with misfortune, misery, and despair. Not only was there was no happy ending to their story, there was no happy beginning and very few happy things in the middle. This is because not very many happy things happened in the lives of the nine Baudelaire children.An AU where the Baudelaires from the books, movies, and Netflix show are all siblings. Inspired by @midas_touch_of_angst's Six Baudelaires AU.





	1. "Your Parents Have Perished In A Terrible Fire"

The nine lives of the Baudelaire children—and I mean this literally, because there were nine of them, six girls and three boys—were rife with misfortune, misery, and despair. Not only was there was no happy ending to their story, there was no happy beginning and very few happy things in the middle. This is because not very many happy things happened in the lives of the nine Baudelaire children.

There were nine Baudelaires, despite anyone’s attempts to tell you any different. There were so many of them that on family outings, strangers would often ask the Baudelaire parents if they were school teachers on a class field trip. During one of her parents’ dinner parties, Violet, the eldest, had overheard a man she vaguely recognized remark that three children were plenty, and why hadn’t Bertrand and his wife listened to his excellent advice. And although each of the nine Baudelaire children secretly agreed with Mr. Snicket from time to time, they wouldn’t give up their numerous siblings for anything in the world.

This series of unfortunate events began on a gray and cloudy morning, when the nine young Baudelaires took a rickety trolley along to the seashore. The cloudy sky didn’t bother the Baudelaires one bit. When it was hot and sunny, Briny Beach was crowded with tourists, and it was impossible to find a good place to lay one’s blanket. On gray and cloudy days, the Baudelaires had the beach to themselves.

Violet was fifteen years old, right-handed, and a good deal taller than the rest of her siblings. This meant that her younger siblings looked up to her, both literally and figuratively (which is always a useful distinction to learn). She, in turn, didn’t look down on her siblings as much as live separately from them. Her head may have been literally in the clouds, but it was figuratively in a world of pulleys, levers, and gears. Violet had a knack for inventing and building useful devices. Anyone who knew Violet well could tell when she was thinking hard, because her shoulder-length hair would be tied up in a ribbon to keep it out of her eyes. She never wanted to be distracted by something as trivial as her hair when she invented.

On that morning, the sea was as flat as glass, the perfect weather for skipping rocks. Violet picked up a rock that was about the right size and shape. She scratched a white X into it, then skipped the rock across the ocean. It bounced three times before disappearing.

“Excuse me, Violet,” said her sister Lilac, “but why are you using your left hand?”

Lilac was the second Baudelaire child but really was the honorary eldest, which meant she kept track of her younger siblings while Violet focused on her own inventions. This great deal of responsibility, plus her black dress and solemn expression, made her seem more serious than her siblings. But she was as fascinated with machinery as Violet was, although she was more of a mechanic than an inventor—someone who preferred to fix up old things rather than make new things. She wore four small braids in her reddish-brown hair, and instead of tying it up like Violet did, she would put her hair in one long braid when she was thinking hard. A braid, after all, was more practical, since there weren’t as many messy strands of hair flying about.

Hearing Lilac’s question, Violet sighed.

“I’m curious to see if I can skip the rock as far with my left as I can with my right.”

“I don’t mean to criticize,” said Lilac, “but standard scientific method calls for stable systematics. You should use your standard right-handedness.”

“The stable systematics of this experiment,” said Violet, with more than a little exasperation in her voice, “are the size and shape of the rock, and of course the ocean’s behavior. I’m testing the strength of my left versus my right hand. I’m trying to become ambidextrous. Being able to use both hands equally well is surprisingly useful.”

Violet walked further down the beach, leaving Lilac behind.

“That does seem reasonable,” Lilac said to Violet’s retreating back. She wondered, not for the first time, if her older sister thought she wasn’t smart enough to associate with. Violet was probably right that Lilac wasn’t smart. Violet was always right.

A shriek came from nearby. The blanket had caught on fire. Lilac raced to the ocean, soaking her skirt in the water. She returned to the blanket and squeezed out all the water from her skirt, dousing the small fire.

“Which one of you did that? April? Nick? Sensible?”

Sensible guiltily hid two small rocks behind her back—rocks that she had struck together to spark a fire.

Sensible was much younger than most of her siblings. She was only three years old, but she had already gotten herself into all sorts of trouble. The Baudelaires’ mother had started teaching her how to cook, hoping the hobby would be an outlet for all of Sensible’s energy. Hoping the same thing, the Baudelaires’ father had taught her chess and several card games. Sensible had picked up the cooking, and to a lesser extent the chess and card games, within a few hours. She still lit things on fire.

Lilac sighed. “How many times do I have to tell you? It’s dangerous to play with fire. Be sensible.”

Sensible pouted. “I _am_ Sensible.”

“Colin!” April shouted. She held out a picnic basket, looking proud of herself.

April was the third Baudelaire daughter and thirteen years old. Like her sisters, she had a talent for inventing things. She liked to make pretty things more than she liked to make useful things, though, and her inventions satisfied her own wild imagination more often than they had any practical use. She had designed machines from a mailbox that could organize the mail by color to a grandfather clock that could toast rye bread. That morning at the beach, April was testing a device that could retrieve a rock after you had skipped it into the ocean.

“Do you think this will be as good as the mailbox?” April asked her brother.

“I think,” said Colin, looking up from his book, _Crawly Things of the Deep_ , “this will be even better than the mailbox.”

Colin was April’s twin. He had been born about four hours before April had, and he would never let her forget it. The two of them were hardly ever apart. If you saw April without Colin, or Colin without April, you had better watch out because the other one was probably hiding around the corner, ready to prank you. But Colin, unlike April, was a researcher, not an inventor, and he wore a pair of glasses to prove it. At that moment, he was reading a thick book about the tiny, slimy creatures in the tide-pools at Briny Beach.

“According to this book, that’s a decapod crustacean of the infraorder _Brachyura_ ,” he said when his younger brother held up a brightly colored creature by the claw.

Nick rolled his eyes. “English, please.”

Nick was the middle Baudelaire child. He was a little older than twelve, and he was an explorer. Although he liked reading about _Brachyura_ with his brothers, he was truly in his element knee-deep in the tide-pools at Briny Beach, handling—and getting snapped at by—the decapod crustaceans himself. He wore reading glasses when he remembered them, which wasn’t often, and anyway he had a tendency to lose his glasses while hiking or swimming or jumping off cliffs without a parachute.

“To put it colloquially,” Colin said to Nick, “it’s a big old crab.”

Solitude, who was only a baby, was sitting on Colin’s lap. She flipped the pages of the book until she reached a section on water-snakes.

“Ayo!” she squealed in delight.

Solitude, which was a fancy name for being all by yourself, was one of the babies of the Baudelaire family. She was more cheerful than her siblings, which meant that Lilac liked to dress her up in uncomfortable, old-fashioned dresses to instill some sense into her. Unfortunately, Solitude had no choice regarding her wardrobe. She was a little less than two years old, an age where one usually speaks in a series of unintelligible shrieks, and most people had trouble understanding what it was that Solitude was saying.

“I wonder what’ll happen if I introduce it to a new habitat.” Nick dangled the squirming crab over a tide-pool several feet down the beach. This new tide-pool was completely empty of plants or animals, save for a single lonely gray anemone in the center.

“Did you know,” he said, “that the anemone is actually an ani—”

“Nick, stop!” Colin shouted. He waved the book in the air wildly. “That anemone is an _Anthopleura sola_. This book says that _Anthopleura sola_ are fiercely territorial. They have stinging nematocytes that will stun, and sometimes kill, any invading creature.”

“That would be cool to see.”

“No, it _wouldn’t_. Klaus, help me out here! Klaus—Klaus, where are you?”

Klaus, the youngest boy in the family, liked to read even more than his brothers did, if such a thing was possible. Like Colin, he wore glasses, which made him look intelligent. He _was_ intelligent. The Baudelaire parents had an enormous library in their mansion, a room filled with thousands of books on nearly every subject. Being only eleven (and too short to reach some of the top shelves, even with the help of a ladder), Klaus had of course not read all of the books in the Baudelaire library, but he had read a great many of them.

“Sunny,” he said to his baby sister, who was chewing on a sandal, “I’m not sure I understand this passage of _Julius Caesar_.”

“Lire?” Sunny said, which probably meant, “Could you read it to me?”

Sunny was the youngest Baudelaire by a little over a year. She was very small for her age, scarcely larger than a boot. What she lacked in size, however, she made up for with the size and sharpness of her four teeth. She could bite through anything that was given to her, and Sensible often used her to test her more experimental culinary enterprises.

“Of all the wonders that I yet have heard, it seems to me most strange,” Klaus read, “that men should fear; seeing that death, a necessary end, will come when it will come.”

“Ides!” Sunny said, which probably meant, “Only one way to find out. You be Caesar, and I’ll be Brutus. _En garde!_ ”

She picked up a stick between her teeth as a makeshift dagger. She crawled toward Klaus and, without warning, jabbed him violently in the knee. Klaus fell to the ground, clutching his knee in pretend agony.

“Et tu, Brute?” he groaned weakly.

He sprawled out across the sand, motionless. Obviously not done yet, Sunny climbed on top of him and continued to stab him in the chest until Lilac ran over and took away the stick.

“Violet, look!”

Across the beach, April and Colin showed Violet their picnic basket.

“I’ve developed a device,” April said, “that can retrieve a rock after you’ve skipped it into the ocean.”

She laid the basket down. She pulled a pink ribbon from her pocket and tied up her long hair (a habit she had picked up from Violet). Then she pulled a lever on the basket’s side. A long metal arm with a spindly claw at the end of it emerged from inside the basket. The claw descended into the ocean, and Colin reeled it in like a fishing rod. In the claw’s firm robotic grip was the rock marked with an X. He handed it to Violet, who placed it in her pocket.

“Impressive,” Violet said as they began walking back to the rest of their siblings. “But not very useful. There are hundreds of rocks on this beach that are the right size and shape for skipping. Why go to all that trouble to retrieve one?”

“Gack!” Solitude shrieked.

“See?” said Violet. “Sol agrees with me.”

What Solitude of course actually meant was, “Look at that mysterious figure emerging from the fog!”

Sure enough, in the distance along the misty shore of Briny Beach, a tall figure was striding toward the nine Baudelaire children. They stared at the figure, trying to imagine who it could be.

“Who do you think it is?” asked Lilac.

“I don’t know,” Nick said, “but it seems to be moving right toward us.”

“We’re alone on the beach,” Violet pointed out. “There’s nobody else it could be moving toward.”

She took the rock marked with an X out of her pocket and held it over her head, as if she was about to throw it at the figure.

“I’m sure it only seems scary because of all the mist,” Colin said.

This was true. As the figure reached them, the children saw with relief that it wasn’t anybody frightening at all.

“It’s Mr. Poe,” said April.

Mr. Poe was a friend of their parents’, and the children had had met him many times at dinner parties. They remembered Mr. Poe because he always had a cold and was constantly excusing himself from the table to have a fit of coughing in the next room.

“How do you do?” said Lilac.

“Fine, thank you,” said Mr. Poe, but he looked very sad. There was a tense silence.

“It’s a nice day,” April said, trying to make conversation.

“It _is_ a nice day, Lilac.” Mr. Poe said absently, staring out at the empty beach.

“April,” she corrected him.

“Yes, of course. I’m afraid I have some very bad news for you children.”

Violet slowly lowered her arm, still holding the rock.

“Your parents,” Mr. Poe said, “have perished in a terrible fire.”

The children didn’t say anything.

“They perished,” Mr. Poe said, “in a fire that destroyed the entire house. I’m very, very sorry to tell you this, my dears.”

Lilac stared at him, at a loss for words. She thought he must be joking. If he was, it wasn’t a very funny joke.

“ ‘Perished,’ ” Mr. Poe said, “means ‘killed.’ ”

“We _know_ what the word ‘perished’ means,” Klaus said crossly. Colin shushed him.

"How did this happen?" Colin asked.

“The exact cause has not been determined yet,” Mr. Poe said. “All I know is that neither the official fire department nor the volunteer fire department arrived in time to stop the blaze.”

“Everything burned down?” Klaus said. “Even the library?”

“Even the library.” He coughed several times into his handkerchief. “I was sent to retrieve you here and to take you to my home, where you’ll stay for some time while we figure things out. I am the executor of your parents’ estate. That means I will be handling their enormous fortune and figuring out where you children will go. When Violet comes of age in three years, the fortune will be yours, but the bank will take charge of it until you are old enough. Come with me.”

The Baudelaires took each other’s hands—with Lilac carrying Sunny, who couldn’t walk yet—and followed Mr. Poe. In that manner, the nine Baudelaire orphans were led away from the beach and from their previous lives.

* * *

“I’ve never been through anything like this myself,” Mr. Poe said, “but I can imagine just how you feel.”

He had brought the nine children to the remains of the Baudelaire mansion to see if anything had been unharmed, and it was terrible. Violet’s microscope had fused together in the heat of the fire. Lilac’s entire repair studio had been burnt to ash. And the grandfather clock, which April had so lovingly turned into a toaster, was toast.

“I did think you’d want to see what remains of your home,” said Mr. Poe, “even though it is more or less…”

Colin gazed at what was left of the library, which was burnt-out and blackened from its once-smooth hardwood floors to its high ceiling. Not a single thing in the library had survived the fire. Not even his favorite pen.

Nick gingerly picked up his reading glasses. The glass inside the frames had exploded in the heat of the fire. They were useless to him now.

“It’s all gone,” he said, disbelieving.

Mr. Poe coughed. “I want to assure you Baudelaires that you have absolutely nothing—”

“We have absolutely nothing,” said Klaus. He looked up at the top shelves, which had once been filled with books that he had looked forward to reading once he grew taller. Now there was only ash.

“—to worry about,” Mr. Poe sighed.

Sensible, Solitude, and Sunny tottered forlornly around the kitchen. Sensible saw that everything in the pantry had burned along with the house. Solitude saw the dried-up remains of one of the little silver creatures that sometimes swam around in the sink, and she cried for its misfortune. And Sunny found one of her teething rings, all melted and burned and useless.

Sunny bit gently on Colin’s hand instead.

“Scope!” she said, which probably meant, “What’s that oddly shaped object lying in your father’s open desk drawer?”

Colin reached in and picked up the oddly shaped object. It was shaped like a cylinder, with lots of curious revolving parts and an eye design carved into the top. He tried twisting one of the revolving parts, and half of the object broke off, crumbling into ash. He couldn’t imagine what the cylinder was useful for, or why it had been in his father’s desk. He pocketed the object.

“Oh, look!” April cried, standing at their mother’s nightstand. “Mother’s engagement ring.”

The ring was beautiful, although it had been warped and twisted by the fire. A spindly, curlicued letter B—or was it an R? April couldn’t tell—was etched in the metal. April turned it over in her palm, holding back tears. To her, the ring was a very grown-up thing, and now her mother would never get to see April grow up herself.

“Baudelaires?” said Mr. Poe. “It’s time to go.”

April had no pockets, but she didn’t want to leave her mother’s ring behind. She slipped it onto her own finger, then followed Mr. Poe and her siblings to the automobile.

Through the backseat window, she took one last, long look at the burnt shell of the Baudelaire mansion, which she barely recognized. It was so different from the home she knew, the one that was filled with whirring inventions, interesting books, amusing things to bite, and—most importantly—their parents.

“Goodbye,” she said anyway. The automobile sped away.


	2. "First Impressions Are Often Entirely Wrong”

Their home destroyed, the Baudelaires had to live in the Poe household, which none of them liked. Mr. Poe was scarcely at home, and Mrs. Poe purchased clothing for the orphans that was in grotesque colors and itched. And the Baudelaires had to share a tiny, bad-smelling room with the two Poe children, Edgar and Albert, who were loud and obnoxious. But even given the surroundings, the children had mixed feelings when, over a dull dinner of boiled chicken, boiled potatoes, and blanched string beans, Mr. Poe announced that they were to leave his household the next morning.

The automobile ride to their new guardians’ home was tense and silent, save for Mr. Poe’s chatter about the promotion he was sure to get at Mulctuary Money Management. Within a few minutes, Solitude and Sunny were sound asleep in the backseat. The rest of the Baudelaires were far too anxious about meeting their new guardian to say anything.

“How’d they do it?” Sensible finally whispered. Unlike her younger sisters, she had gotten the hang of words a couple of years ago.

“Do what?” Colin asked.

“Set the fire.”

“That’s a horrible thing to say,” said Lilac. “You heard Mr. Poe. It was a dreadful accident, nothing more.”

“Accident, schmaccident.”

Lilac frowned, but Sensible’s remark had gotten Colin thinking. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the odd cylindrical object. The eye design on the top seemed to be staring at him. He carefully pried up the section with the eye design, and it popped off, exposing a glass lens. Although the rest of the cylinder was still dusted with ash, the lens was clean, as if it had been used very recently.

“It’s a spyglass,” he murmured.

“What?” April leaned over to see what he was doing.

“A spyglass,” he repeated. “I found it in Father’s desk drawer.”

“I wonder what Father was doing with it.”

“Maybe this didn’t belong to him,” Colin said quietly.

“Then who would it belong to?”

“The person who burned down our house.”

Klaus had overheard the whole conversation, and he didn’t like the alarming implications. He needed to change the subject.

“Excuse me, Mr. Poe? Where exactly are we going?”

“I have made arrangements,” he said, after a brief fit of coughing, “for you to be raised by a distant relative of yours who lives on the other side of town. His name is Count Olaf.”

“We’ve never heard of a Count Olaf,” said April. “Just how is he related to us, exactly?”

“He is either a third cousin four times removed, or a fourth cousin three times removed. He is not your closest relative on the family tree, but he is the closest geographically. And your parents’ will was very specific about your being raised by your closest living relative.”

“Does he really think that’s what ‘closest living relative’ means?” Colin whispered to April. She shrugged.

“If he lives in the city,” Violet said, “why didn’t our parents ever invite him over?”

“Possibly because he was very busy. He’s an actor by trade, and he often travels around the world with various theater companies.”

Klaus frowned. “I thought he was a count.”

“He is both a count and an actor,” said Mr. Poe. “The two are not mutually exclusive.”

The children lapsed into silence again. They watched out the window as Mr. Poe drove down the streets of the city. Finally, Mr. Poe drove his automobile down a narrow alley lined with houses made of pale brick and stopped halfway down the block.

“Here we are,” he said. “Your new home.”

The Baudelaire children looked out and saw the prettiest house on the block. The bricks were clean, and the windowsills were decorated with colorful plants. Standing in the doorway was an older woman, dressed in a black gown and white wig, carrying a flowerpot and a bag of groceries. She smiled brightly when she saw the children.

“Hello there!” she called out. “Salutations! Shalom! You must be the Baudelaire children.”

The children got out of the automobile. Violet shook the woman’s hand.

“But I had no idea there were so many of you,” said the woman. “Are you really all one family?”

“Yes, we are,” Violet said, pretending she wasn’t tired of answering that question. “I’m Violet Baudelaire, and these are my siblings. And this is Mr. Poe, who has been arranging things for us since the death of our parents.”

“Mulctuary Money Management,” Mr. Poe said, handing her a business card. “My name and title are on the card. Although I may be in line for a promotion, so that might change.”

“Yes, I heard about the accident,” the woman said. “I’m Justice Strauss.”

“That’s an unusual first name,” Klaus remarked.

Nick elbowed him in the ribs. “It’s her title, not her first name.”

Justice Strauss smiled kindly. “An easy mistake to make. I serve as a judge on the High Court.”

“How fascinating,” said Violet. “And are you married to Count Olaf?”

“Goodness me, no,” Justice Strauss said. “I don’t actually know him that well. He’s my next-door neighbor.”

The children looked from the well-scrubbed house of Justice Strauss to the dilapidated one next door. An image of an eye was carved into the front door, which was stained with soot and grime. Rising above the door was a tall and dirty tower that sagged to the side like a crooked tooth.

“Oh,” said Solitude, which probably meant, “Let’s sleep outside.”

“No!” said Sunny, and everyone knew what she meant. She meant, “What a terrible place! I don’t want to live there at all!”

“Well, it was nice to meet you,” Violet said to Justice Strauss.

“Yes,” said Justice Strauss, gesturing to her flowerpot. “Perhaps one day you could come over and help me with my gardening.”

“That would be very pleasant,” Violet said. It would, of course, be very pleasant to help Justice Strauss with her gardening, but Violet couldn't help thinking that it would be more pleasant to live in Justice Strauss’s house instead of Count Olaf’s.

Nick said it out loud.

“It would be much more pleasant to live in your house, Justice Strauss,” he said, “instead of Count Olaf’s.”

“Oh, I’m sure living with Count Olaf will be very pleasant,” Justice Strauss said. “His house may look a bit old and worn-down, but first impressions are often entirely wrong. You can look at a painting for the first time, for example, and not like it at all, but after looking at it a little longer you may find it very pleasing.”

“Nick,” said Lilac, “Remember when Sensible was born? You didn’t like her at all, but by the time she was six weeks old, you two were thick as thieves.”

Nick smiled a little, remembering. “Fetching and biting.”

“Exactly,” said Justice Strauss. “I’m sure you’ll come to like living with Count Olaf once you meet him.”

Mr. Poe tipped his hat to Justice Strauss, who smiled at the children and disappeared into her lovely house. Colin stepped forward and knocked on Count Olaf’s door, right in the middle of the carved eye. He noticed the design was exactly the same as the one on the spyglass.

There was a pause. And then the door creaked open.

“Hello hello hello,” Count Olaf said in a wheezy whisper. He was very tall and very thin, dressed in a gray suit that had many dark stains on it. His face was unshaven, and he had just one long eyebrow and very shiny eyes.

“Hello, my children. Please step into your new home, and wipe your feet outside so no mud gets indoors.”

As they stepped into the house, Mr. Poe behind them, the Baudelaire orphans realized what a ridiculous thing Count Olaf had just said. The room in which they found themselves was the dirtiest they had ever seen, from the stuffed head of a lion nailed to the wall to the bowl of bitter apple cores which sat on a small wooden table.

“This room looks like it needs a little work,” Mr. Poe said, peering around in the gloom.

“A little work?” Nick repeated incredulously. “It’s filthy! We can’t live here!”

“I realize that my humble home isn’t as fancy as the Baudelaire mansion,” Count Olaf said, “but perhaps with a bit of your money we could fix it up a little nicer.”

“The Baudelaire fortune,” Mr. Poe said sternly, “will not be used for such matters. In fact, it will not be used at all, until Violet is of age.”

Count Olaf turned to Mr. Poe. For a moment, Violet worried that Count Olaf would strike the banker across the face. But then he swallowed and shrugged his shoulders.

“All right then,” he said. “It’s the same to me. I must say, you’re a gloomy-looking bunch. Why so glum?”

Nick gaped. “Our parents just died.”

“Oh yes, of course. How very, very awful. Well, I hope I can prove myself to be the father you never had.”

“We had a father,” said Colin.

“And a mother,” said April. “Her name was B—”

“Yes, I know,” Count Olaf interrupted. “Remarkable woman. Flammable.”

“Schmuck!” Solitude exclaimed.

Count Olaf ushered the Baudelaires deeper inside the house. “Thank you very much, Mr. Poe, for bringing them here. Children, I will now show you to your room.”

“Room?” Sensible protested as he led them away.

“Goodbye, children,” Mr. Poe said, stepping back through the front door. “I hope you’ll be very happy here. I’ll continue to see you occasionally, and you can always contact me at the bank if you have any questions.”

“But we don’t even know where the bank is,” Klaus said.

“I have a map of the city,” Count Olaf said. “Goodbye, Mr. Poe.”

He leaned forward to shut the door. In one last desperate attempt, Colin tried to shoulder his way into the doorway, but Count Olaf pushed him aside.

“Mr. Poe!” Colin shouted as the door closed with a bang, like the door to a prison cell. Overcome with despair, he looked down. Curiously, he saw that Count Olaf had an image of an eye tattooed on his ankle, matching the eye on his front door and the eye on their father’s broken spyglass.

* * *

During the first few days after the orphans’ arrival at Count Olaf’s, they attempted to make themselves feel at home, but it was really no use. Even though Count Olaf’s house was quite large, all nine children were placed together in one bedroom with only one small bed. Instead of a closet, there was a large cardboard box that had once held a refrigerator. And the only decoration on the peeling walls was a large and ugly painting of an eye, matching the one on Count Olaf’s ankle and the spyglass.

Nick balked when Count Olaf showed them their room for the first time.

“There’s only one bed!”

Count Olaf sighed. “As you can see, I have provided, at no cost to you, this complimentary pile of rocks.”

Sunny crawled over to the pile of rocks and bit one. It exploded, dusting everyone with a fine rain of tiny gray rock particles.

“Loess,” she said, which probably meant, “Not hard enough.”

Count Olaf simply scoffed and walked out.

“Well, I’ve got a good feeling about this,” Nick said as soon as he was gone. “He seems like a great guy. I mean, the room could use some fixing up, but there’s nothing some lumber and paint couldn’t fix.”

Solitude whined.

“You’re scaring her,” Lilac said.

“ _I’m_ scaring her?” Nick shouted. “Lilac, what are we doing here?”

She pulled Solitude closer. “Don’t do this.”

“Our parents are gone, our house is burnt down, and now we’re stuck with this guy. These things don’t just happen!”

“Well, obviously they do!” Lilac shouted back. “But we’re going to get through this, and we’re going to be _fine_!”

“Lilac, look at this place!”

She put Solitude down and started twisting her hair into a braid. “I can fix it.”

“How?”

“There’s always something, Nick!”

She seemed on the verge of tears as she tied her hair ribbon. April gently placed a hand on her shoulder.

“Listen,” April said to Nick. “We’re it now. It’s just us, and we have to make this work. We’re _going_ to make this work.”

“Can we really?” said Nick. “Sunny destroyed our complimentary pile of rocks.”

Lilac shot him one last glare. “We don’t need to sleep on _rocks_.”

She knelt down and opened the Baudelaires’ one small suitcase. She pulled out an ugly, itchy, bright orange sweater that was at least two sizes too big for any of the children.

“We can make blankets out of the clothing Mrs. Poe gave us.”

“It’s not like we were ever going to wear them anyway,” Nick said.

“We’ll cut the sweaters apart and sew three of them together to make one blanket,” Lilac said. She used a rock fragment to draw guidelines on the sweater. “Sunny, can you bite on the dotted lines?”

“Versace,” Sunny said, which probably meant, “I would be happy to.”

“That makes three blankets—”

“I call one of them,” Nick said.

“No, you don’t,” Lilac said sharply. “We’ll rotate. One or two people in the bed, three in the sweaters, and the rest on the floor. It’s the best we can manage.”

“The babies shouldn’t sleep on the floor,” said Klaus. “They need a bed.”

“We can use the curtains,” said April.

She removed the dusty curtains from the curtain rod that hung over the bedroom’s one window and bunched them together to form a sort of cushion, just big enough for her three younger sisters.

“Now we don’t have any curtains,” Nick said when she was done. “We’ll wake up at the crack of dawn every day.”

“Would you rather our sisters sleep on the floor?” Klaus asked.

Nick huffed. “Well, I’m not giving up my blanket.”

“You boys can take the blankets,” said Lilac. “Violet, April, and I will take turns between the bed and the floor.”

“There’s no need for that,” Violet said. It was the first time she had spoken since entering Count Olaf’s house.

“I’ll sleep on the floor,” she said. “Lilac, you and April can share the bed.”

April frowned. “Are you sure?”

Violet shrugged. “It’s no big deal. The bed looks as hard as the floor anyway.”


	3. "Do You Think Anything Will Feel Like Home Again?"

As the days passed by, the Baudelaire orphans learned that Count Olaf was demanding and short-tempered. Solitude’s second birthday came and went without even a nod of acknowledgement from their new guardian. The only good thing to be said for Count Olaf is that he wasn’t around very often. He would often not appear until nighttime, and spent most of the day out of the house or up in the high tower, where the children were forbidden to go.

One morning, when the Baudelaire children woke up and chose their clothing out of the refrigerator box, they walked into the kitchen and found a list of instructions left for them by Count Olaf. It was a list of difficult chores, and instead of a signature Count Olaf had drawn an eye at the bottom of the note.

“Paint the fence,” Violet read from the note. “Wax the automobile, sand the floor, paint the house. Signed, O.”

“What?” Nick snatched the note from Violet. He held it far away from his face, the words and letters swimming together without his reading glasses. “This is ridiculous.”

“Well,” said Lilac, “at least we’re not being eaten by a bear.”

“Thanks,” said Nick, letting the note fall to the dirty floor. “That’s really helpful.”

“I keep telling you,” Colin said, “that eye is the same eye that’s on the spyglass. Count Olaf is up to something.”

“Oh, he’s up to something,” April said. She flipped the note over to reveal more writing on the back. “Look at the rest of this note!”

The nine Baudelaires crowded around the note. It read: 

> My theater troupe will be coming for dinner before tonight’s performance. Have dinner ready for all six of us by the time we arrive at seven o’clock. Buy the food, prepare it, set the table, serve dinner, clean up afterwards, and stay out of our way.

Taped to the note was a small sum of money for the groceries.

“Sensible is the only one of us who knows how to cook,” Klaus said.

“And Sensible isn’t going anywhere near a stove,” Lilac said.

“I know how to repair the windows,” Violet said, “and how to clean the chimney, because those sorts of things interest me. But I don’t know how to cook anything except toast.”

“And sometimes you burn the toast,” Lilac said, and they smiled. They were both remembering a time when the two of them had gotten up early to make a special breakfast for their parents. Violet had burned the toast, and their parents, smelling smoke, had run downstairs to see what the matter was, only to find Violet and Lilac looking forlornly at pieces of pitch-black toast.

“Do you remember,” Violet said, “how frightened our parents were?”

Lilac nodded. “All the way down the stairs, they were whispering something about how he had found them and how to get all of us into a tunnel. Then they saw the burnt toast, and they laughed and laughed.”

That had been many years ago, before Sensible had been born. Lilac couldn’t imagine making toast with her older sister now.

“I wish they were here,” Lilac said. “They would never let us stay in this dreadful place.”

“If they were here,” Nick said, his voice rising as he got more and more upset, “we wouldn’t be with Count Olaf in the first place. I _hate_ it here! I _hate_ this house! I _hate_ our room! I _hate_ having to do all these chores, and I _hate_ Count Olaf!”

He tore the note in two and flung the pieces to the ground.

“I hate it too,” Lilac said, and Nick looked at his older sister with relief.

“I didn’t know you _could_ hate anyone,” said Nick. “You don’t even hate me.”

“I’ll never hate you, Nick,” she said. “But sometimes, just saying that you hate something, and having someone agree with you, can make you feel better about a terrible situation."

"Well," he said, "I hate everything about our lives right now.”

“But we have to keep our chins up, like Father always said,” April said. “We have to try to stay cheerful.”

“You’re right,” Nick said. “But it’s very difficult to keep one’s chin up when Count Olaf keeps shoving it down.”

“Cookbook,” Sensible said.

“That’s a sensible idea,” said Klaus. “Perhaps we could find a cookbook and read about how to cook. It shouldn’t be that difficult to make a simple meal. Our parents did it all the time.”

The children spent several minutes opening and shutting Count Olaf’s kitchen cupboards, but there weren’t any cookbooks to be found.

“I can’t say I’m surprised,” Colin said. “We haven’t found any books in this house at all.”

“I know,” Klaus said miserably. “I miss reading very much. We have to go out and look for a library sometime soon.”

“But not today,” Violet said firmly. “Today we have to cook for fifteen people.”

At that moment, there was a knock on the front door. The children looked at one another nervously.

“Who could that be at this hour?” April asked.

Klaus walked slowly to the front door and peered through the peephole, which was in the shape of an eye.

“It’s Justice Strauss!” he said delightedly.

“Justice Strauss!” said Lilac. “Thank goodness.”

“Ask her to adopt us,” Nick called out.

Klaus opened the door. “Justice Strauss! How nice to see you. Do come—”

“Don’t let her in!” Violet hissed.

Remembering how filthy the house was, Klaus froze awkwardly in the doorway.

“Please forgive me for not stopping by sooner,” Justice Strauss said. “I wanted to see how you children were settling in, but I had a very difficult case in the High Court and it was taking up much of my time.”

“What sort of case was it?” Klaus asked.

“I can’t really discuss it,” Justice Strauss said, “because it’s official business. But I can tell you it concerns a poisonous plant and the illegal use of someone’s credit card.”

“How interesting,” said Klaus. He didn’t find it interesting. Law was Colin’s realm of expertise, not his.

“But enough about me,” Justice Strauss said. “How are you children getting on? Is there anything you desire?”

The children looked at one another, thinking of all the things they desired. A few extra beds, and proper cribs for Solitude and Sunny. Curtains for the window in their room. A closet instead of a cardboard box. An inventing studio, a library full of books, and a clean kitchen to cook in. And of course, their parents, but that was impossible.

Finally, Sensible spoke. “Cookbook!”

“Could we perhaps borrow a cookbook?” Klaus asked Justice Strauss. “Count Olaf has instructed us to make dinner for his theater troupe tonight, and we can’t find a cookbook in the house.”

“Goodness,” Justice Strauss said. “Cooking dinner for an entire theater troupe seems like a lot to ask of children.”

“Count Olaf gives us a lot of…”

“Responsibility,” Violet said, coming out of the kitchen. “He gives us a lot of responsibility.”

“Well, why don’t you come next door to my house,” Justice Strauss said, “and find a cookbook that pleases you?”

The children agreed, and they followed Justice Strauss out the door and over to her well-kept house. She led them through an elegant hallway into an enormous room, and when they saw what was inside, all nine children gasped in wonder.

The room was a library. Although most of the books were on law, there were also books on inventing, and mechanics, and every known species of snake from A to Z. There were even several sturdy board books that were perfect for biting. In one corner, there were some large, comfortable-looking chairs and a wooden table with lamps hanging over them, perfect for reading. The Baudelaire children were thrilled. Sensible ran directly to the section for cookbooks.

“This is a wonderful library,” Violet said.

“Thank you very much,” said Justice Strauss. “I’ve been collecting books for years, and I’m very proud of my collection. As long as you keep them in good condition, you’re welcome to use any of my books at any time. It’s always a pleasure to see young people interested in books.”

“If you don’t mind,” said Violet, “Lilac and I would love to look at any of your books concerning mechanical engineering. Inventing things is a great interest of ours.”

“Mine as well,” said April. “Colin and I would love to read about hot air ballooning.”

“And I’d like to look at books on wolves,” Nick said. “Recently I’ve been fascinated by the wild animals of North America.”

Klaus rolled his eyes. “Of course you have. I’m interested in the works of Marcel Proust, in the original French if you have it.”

“Seuss,” said Sunny, which probably meant, “Please don’t forget to pick out a picture book for me.”

“Snake!” Solitude shrieked with no further explanation.

“Well, my private library is open to you whenever you’d like. There are sections on everything from Italian cuisine to the world’s most threatening fungus,” said Justice Strauss. “A library is like an island in a vast sea of ignorance. Don’t you agree?”

“I do,” Colin said. “Particularly if the library is tall and the surrounding area has been flooded.”

“That’s a very good point. But first I think we’d better find a good recipe, don’t you? I always find cooking for family to be something of a mitzvah. You children have had such sorrow in your lives already. You deserve the blessing of a new family with Count Olaf, and if you don’t mind my saying so, with me.”

“Adank,” Sunny said, which probably meant, “We don’t mind your saying so.”

Justice Strauss smiled. “The cookbooks are over here on the eastern wall.”

Sensible had already found a cookbook that was easy to read and had simple recipes. She pointed to one glossy page.

“What’s that, Sensible?” Nick asked.

“Puttanesca!”

“Sensible Presley Baudelaire!” Lilac exclaimed. “That’s a very bad word to call your brother.”

“No, it’s pasta puttanesca,” said Nick. “That’s Italian for ‘very few ingredients.’ ”

Violet frowned. “No, it’s not.”

“Puttanesca,” Sensible repeated.

“Whatever it means,” Klaus said, looking at the recipe over Nick’s shoulder, “it’s an Italian sauce for pasta. All we need to do is sauté olives, capers, anchovies, garlic, diced parsley, and tomatoes together in a pot, and prepare spaghetti to go with it.”

“Oh,” said April. “That sounds simple.”

“Yes, it does,” said Colin. "But getting the ingredients will only be the easy part.”

* * *

“Thank you so much for helping us out today,” Lilac said as she and her siblings walked home from the market with Justice Strauss. “I don’t know what we would have done without you.”

“You seem like very intelligent people,” Justice Strauss said. “I daresay you would have thought of something. But it continues to strike me as odd that Count Olaf has asked you to prepare such an enormous meal. Well, here we are. I have to go inside and put my own groceries away. I hope you children will come over soon and borrow books from my library.”

“Tomorrow?” Klaus said quickly. “Could we come over tomorrow?”

“I don’t see why not,” Justice Strauss said, smiling.

“I can’t tell you how much we appreciate this,” Violet said. “Tomorrow, before we use your library again, we would be more than happy to do household chores for you.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Justice Strauss said. “You children are always welcome in my home.”

Then she turned and went into her home, and the Baudelaire orphans went into theirs. For most of the afternoon, the older Baudelaires cooked the puttanesca sauce according to the recipe and Sensible’s direction. Violet roasted the garlic, Lilac washed the capers, April chopped the anchovies, Colin made a ceiling-high column of flame erupt from the stove, Nick peeled the tomatoes, and Klaus pitted the olives. Solitude banged on a pot with a wooden spoon, while Sunny sang a rather repetitive song she had written herself.

“I think Father would be proud of this sauce,” April said.

“And I think Mother would be proud of how we made our own pasta,” Nick said.

“Maybe we can make this our home after all,” Lilac said.

“Remember,” Klaus said, “what Father said after he burnt the quesadillas?”

Colin nodded. “ ‘Better than nothing.’ ”

Just as they were placing the chocolate pudding in the refrigerator to cool, the Baudelaire orphans heard a loud, booming sound as the front door was flung open.

“Orphans?” Count Olaf called out. “Where are you, orphans?”

“In the kitchen, Count Olaf,” Klaus said. “We’re just finishing dinner.”

“You’d better be,” Count Olaf said, and he strode into the kitchen. He gazed at all nine Baudelaire children with his shiny eyes. “My troupe is right behind me, and they’re very hungry.”

“Olaf! Where’s Olaf?” several voices called out. Count Olaf paused as members of his theater troupe crowded into the kitchen. There was a bald man with a very long nose. There were two women who had bright white powder all over their faces, and a man with very long and skinny arms, at the end of which were two hooks instead of hands. Standing in the doorway was a person of indeterminate gender. They were singing a terribly off-key song that involved spelling Count Olaf’s name several times over.

“I think they missed the O in ‘Count,’ ” Nick muttered to Klaus.

The Baudelaires stepped out of the kitchen, each holding a bowl of pasta and puttanesca sauce.

“Dinner is served.”

Olaf’s eyes narrowed. “Dinner?”

Violet nodded at the bowls of pasta. “Puttanesca.”

“What did you call me?”

“It’s pasta,” Nick said. “Pasta with very few ingredients.”

“Nick, that’s not what puttanesca means—”

“Where is the roast beef?” Count Olaf said.

There was a brief silence.

“We didn’t make roast beef,” Violet said. “We made puttanesca sauce.”

“What?” Count Olaf asked. “No roast beef?”

“You didn’t tell us you wanted roast beef,” Klaus said.

Count Olaf slid toward the children so that he looked even taller than he was, even taller than Violet. His one eyebrow raised in anger.

“In agreeing to adopt you,” he said, “I have become your father, and as your father I am not someone to be trifled with. I demand that you serve roast beef to myself and my guests.”

“We don’t have any!” April cried. “We made puttanesca sauce!”

“Pannacotta,” Sunny said, which probably meant, “And chocolate pudding for dessert.”

Count Olaf looked down at Sunny. Suddenly, he picked her up in one hand and raised her high above his head. Sunny was understandably very frightened and began crying immediately, too scared to even try to bite the hand that held her.

“Put her down immediately, you beast!” Nick shouted. He ran towards Count Olaf, fully ready to tackle him, but Violet roughly pulled him back.

“Are you crazy?” she whispered.

Solitude either couldn’t hear Violet, or she didn’t care about her warning, because she bit Count Olaf on the wrist. He yelped in surprise.

“Pah!” she shouted, which probably meant, “Back off, parrot face. I’ll bite higher!”

“I asked you to make dinner,” Count Olaf said, “and all you have made is some disgusting sauce.”

“You can’t go easy on children,” the hook-handed man said. “They must be taught to obey their elders.”

“That’s what happens with wealthy kids,” the person of indeterminate gender said. “Money is really a corrupting influence.”

“Well,” said Count Olaf. “Let’s not get carried away.”

He lowered Sunny to the floor. “You’re so awful I can scarcely stand to touch you.”

“I can hardly blame you,” said one of the white-faced women.

Lilac breathed a sigh of relief and scooped up Sunny in her arms. Count Olaf rubbed his hands together as if he had been holding something revolting instead of an infant.

“Well, enough talk,” he said. “I suppose we will eat their dinner, even though it is all wrong. Everyone, follow me to the dining room and I’ll pour us some wine. Perhaps by the time these brats serve us, we’ll be too drunk to care if it is roast beef or not.”

“Hurrah!” cried several members of the troupe, and they marched through the kitchen, following Count Olaf into the dining room. The bald man stopped and stared Violet in the eye. He grabbed her face in his hands, and Violet froze with fear.

“You’re a pretty one,” he said. “If I were you I would try not to anger Count Olaf, or he might wreck that pretty little face of yours.”

The bald man giggled and left the room, leaving the Baudelaire children alone in the kitchen. For several moments none of them could move or speak.

“This is terrible,” Klaus said finally. “Violet, what can we do?”

Violet didn’t respond, just stared at the door through which the theater troupe had come.

April started to cry. “I’m afraid.”

“Me too,” Colin said, patting her on the shoulder.

“We’d better serve the puttanesca,” Klaus said, “or who knows what Count Olaf will do to us.”

Violet nodded, but she didn’t move. Without a word, Lilac took Violet’s bowl from her and walked into the dining room with a bowl in each hand, sparing Violet from having to see the awful members of Count Olaf’s theater troupe again.

By the time the main course was over, it was late at night. Lilac and the twins began to usher the babies away to bed, leaving Nick and Klaus to serve the chocolate pudding.

“What if we poisoned the pudding?” Nick whispered to Klaus.

Klaus considered the option, then shook his head. “We didn’t buy any poison at the market.”

Nick sighed. “I wish we had.”

“Murder is never justified,” Violet said.

“Unless you have a good reason,” Nick shot back.

“Justice Strauss said she had a book on the world’s most threatening fungus,” said Klaus. “Maybe we can use that next time we have to make dinner for Count Olaf.”

At that moment, Count Olaf and his associates strode into the kitchen. It was obvious that they had drunk a great deal of wine. He looked around the room, which was filled with dirty dishes.

“Because you haven’t cleaned up yet,” he said to the orphans, “I suppose you can be excused from attending tonight’s performance. But after cleaning up, you are to go straight to your beds.”

“You mean our bed!” Nick shouted. “You’ve only provided us with one bed!”

Violet took in a sharp breath. Lilac froze at the foot of the stairs, a sleeping Solitude in her arms. The members of the theater troupe stopped in their tracks. They glanced from Nick to Count Olaf to see what would happen next. Count Olaf raised his one eyebrow.

“If you would like another bed,” he said calmly, “tomorrow you may go into town and purchase one.”

“You know perfectly well we haven’t any money,” Nick said.

“Of course you do,” Count Olaf said, and his voice began to get a little louder. “You are the inheritors of an enormous fortune.”

“That money,” Nick said, his voice rising to match Count Olaf’s, “is not to be used until Violet is of age.”

Count Olaf’s face grew very red. For a moment he said nothing. Then, in one sudden movement, he struck Nick across the face. Nick fell to the floor, his face inches from the eye tattooed on Count Olaf’s ankle.

Count Olaf looked around at his theater troupe, who were all quite still with shock.

“Come on, friends,” Count Olaf said to his associates. “We’ll be late for our own performance.”

The members of the theater troupe started filing out of the kitchen. The sound of their heavy shoes snapped Lilac out of her shock.

“You monster!” Lilac shouted at Count Olaf. “We’re going to call Mr. Poe about this right now!”

“He’s not listening, Lilac,” Colin said.

Sunny began to cry again, which made Solitude wake up and cry too, and they continued weeping as they washed the dishes, and as they blew out the candles in the dining room, and as they changed out of their clothes and lay down to go to sleep.

After the babies had gone to bed, Colin knelt down at Nick’s side.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“No.”

Nick got up and went to the grimy window. After some maneuvering, he managed to pry it open. Violet flinched at the cold night air.

“Nick, close the window,” she said, visibly tense. “Remember what happened when we left the library window open overnight, and it rained.”

“No way,” he said. “I’m going.”

“Going where?” Colin asked.

“Home.”

Colin sighed. “This is our home now.”

Nick turned around and shook his head. “This is _not_ home,” he said. “Home is where your parents put you to bed at night. Where they teach you to ride a bike, or where they get all choked up on your first day of school.”

“Nick—”

“This is _not_ home.” Disgusted, he forced the window shut again. “How could they do this to us?”

“They’re just bad people,” April said. “Bad people exist everywhere.”

“Not them,” Nick said. “Mother and Father.”

“Nick, how could you say that?”

“April, you’re thinking it too. How could they? Did they have no plan for us at all?”

“Maybe they did have a plan.” April was saying it partly to convince Nick, but mostly to convince herself.

“It sure doesn’t look like it to me.” He sat back down on his blanket. “We should have poisoned him.”

Lilac crossed the room. She sat down next to Nick, her legs all tangled up in the itchy, too-small blanket.

“Do you remember when Mother and Father went to that ball in Winnipeg?” she said quietly. “And we thought they’d abandoned us because they didn’t even write? And then we found out that they’d written a long letter that had just gotten lost in the mail. Do you remember how guilty we felt for thinking bad thoughts about them?”

“ _You_ might have felt guilty,” Nick said. “ _I_ didn’t. If our parents had wanted us to know they had gone to Winnipeg, they would have made sure their letter had reached us. They would have sent us dozens, hundreds of letters until they got a response from us.”

Lilac sighed. “They trusted that we would have gotten the letter. And they trusted that _we_ trusted that they were coming back. It’s just like that.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Why?”

“Because they’re not coming back.” He tucked his knees up to his chin. “Lilac, do you think anything will feel like home again?”

Lilac was silent for a long time.

“I don’t know,” she finally said. “But it’s better than nothing.”

She got up from the blankets and started braiding her hair. Once that was done, she tugged the thin sheet off the bed and started threading a rope through a loop at the edge of the sheet.

“What are you doing?” asked Nick.

“Making a home.”

Klaus helped her set up the sheets to make a sort of tent over the bed. Colin placed the spyglass at the corner of the blanket fort, angled so it could perfectly catch the moonlight. As a finishing touch, April removed a gold locket with photographs of their parents from her own neck and placed it in front of the spyglass, projecting their parents’ silhouettes onto the light gray sheet. Making a blanket fort was a game the Baudelaires had played many times before when one of them needed cheering up, but never in such unfortunate circumstances as these.

Lilac turned to Violet, who was standing at the now-closed window. “Violet? Do you want to come in?”

Violet hung up her dress on a hook on the wall. “I think I’ll stay out here tonight.”

Lilac glanced at Violet one last time, then ducked inside the fort.

“I promise it’ll be alright,” she said to her siblings.

“Doll fight?” Colin said. “We haven’t played with dolls in years.”

“Walls have ears?” Klaus said. “All I see is that painting of an eye.”

“Fainting on rye?” Nick joined in. “I prefer ham and sourdough.”

Lilac rolled her eyes. “This game is so juvenile.”

Once Nick’s breaths were even and Lilac was sure he was asleep, she ducked back outside and joined Violet, who was still looking out the window.

“Stop lying to him,” Violet told her sister. “This isn’t.”

“What?” Lilac said.

“Better than nothing.”

“We can fix it. There’s always something.”

“You really don’t get it, L.”

Violet walked to the corner where she slept, her arms wrapped around herself. She buried her face in her arms, pretending to be asleep. Lilac looked away, pretending that she couldn’t see Violet crying.


	4. “There Are Countless Types Of Books In This World”

The next morning’s note from Count Olaf ordered them to chop firewood in the backyard, and as the older Baudelaires swung their axes down over each log, they discussed possible plans of action, while Sunny chewed meditatively on a small piece of wood.

“Look at Nick’s bruise,” Colin said. “Clearly we can’t stay here any longer. I would rather take my chances on the streets than live in this terrible place.”

“But who knows what misfortunes would befall us on the streets?” Lilac pointed out. “At least here we have a roof over our heads.”

“We should just shoot him,” Nick said. He hoisted up his axe like a rifle. “Then we would have the house, the fortune, and no Count Olaf.”

“That’s a preposterous idea,” Violet said. “Guns don’t exist in this city.”

“And put that axe down,” Lilac said. “You’re going to take someone’s head off.”

“Yeah,” said Nick. “Count Olaf’s.”

Lilac sighed.

“Fine,” said Nick. “We’ll just beat him unconscious instead and report him to the authorities. There are nine of us, and only one of him. And Sunny bites. We can take him.”

“You’re forgetting about his horrible theater troupe,” Colin said. “We might be able to defeat one person, but we can’t take down all six of them.”

“I wish our parents’ money could be used now, instead of when Violet comes of age,” April said. “Then we could buy a castle and live in it.”

“With armed guards patrolling the outside to keep out Count Olaf and his troupe,” said Nick.

“And I could have a large studio,” Lilac said wistfully. “Filled with gears and pulleys and wires and an elaborate computer system.”

“And I could have a large library,” Colin said. “As comfortable as Justice Strauss’s, but more enormous.”

“Cookbook,” Sensible said. “And clean kitchen.”

“Snake,” said Solitude.

“Gibbo!” Sunny shrieked, which probably meant, “And I could have lots of things to bite.”

“Perhaps Justice Strauss could adopt us,” Klaus said. “She said we were always welcome in her home.”

“There’s no use entertaining such notions,” Violet said. “You heard what Mr. Poe said. Our parents' will said we were to be raised by our closest living relative.”

“Mr. Poe!” said Lilac. “He told us when he dropped us here that we could contact him at the bank if we had any questions.”

“We don’t really have a question,” Colin said. “We have a complaint.”

“I can’t think of anyone else to contact,” Lilac said. “Mr. Poe is in charge of our affairs, and I’m sure if he knew how horrid Count Olaf is, he would take us right out of here.”

The Baudelaire orphans looked at each other. Would Mr. Poe really take them away from Count Olaf?

“Worth a try,” said Sensible.

As soon as the Baudelaire orphans had finished chopping firewood, they set off for the city’s banking district to find Mr. Poe.

The children stopped at the Fountain of Victorious Finance and took a look around. The banking district consisted of several wide streets with large marble buildings on each side of them, all banks. Mulctuary Money Management was square and plain-looking, though once inside, the three orphans were intimidated by the hustle and bustle of the adults racing around the room. Finally, they asked a guard if they could speak to Mr. Poe, and he led them into a large office that was square and plain-looking like the rest of the building.

“Why, hello,” said Mr. Poe, in a puzzled tone of voice. “Please come in.”

The Baudelaire children sat down in nine uncomfortable chairs. Mr. Poe opened his mouth to speak, but had to cough into a handkerchief before he could begin.

“I’m very busy today,” he said finally, “so I don’t have too much time to chat. Next time you should call ahead of time when you plan on being in the neighborhood, and I’ll put some time aside to take you to lunch. Unfortunately, my lunch hour today is already booked. I’m taking my secretary to a fancy restaurant to celebrate Secretary’s Day.”

Mr. Poe’s secretary, a young blonde woman with the initials “J.S.” on her nameplate, winked and waved at the Baudelaires from across the office. April gasped and quickly hid her hands behind her back.

“That sounds very pleasant,” Violet said, “and we’re sorry we didn’t contact you before we stopped by, but we find ourselves in an urgent—”

“Count Olaf is a madman,” Nick interrupted, getting right to the point. “We can’t stay with him.”

“He struck Nick across the face,” said Colin.

“His theater troupe threatened Violet,” said Lilac.

“He only provided us with one bed,” said April.

“He makes us do a great many difficult chores,” said Klaus.

“Pumice,” Sunny said, which probably meant, “He gave us rocks instead of toys.”

"Ardere," Solitude said, which probably meant, "He asked young children to cook on a stove."

“Lush,” said Sensible.

“Excuse me,” Mr. Poe said, as the telephone rang. “Poe here,” he said. “What? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. No. Yes. Thank you.”

He hung up and quickly wrote something down on one of his papers, then looked at the children.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “What were you saying about Count Olaf? Making you do chores doesn’t sound too bad.”

“He calls us orphans,” said Nick.

“You _are_ orphans.”

“He has terrible friends,” said Klaus.

“ _I_ have terrible friends.”

“Poko,” Solitude said, which probably meant, “He’s always asking about our money.”

Mr. Poe put up his hands to indicate he had heard enough. “Children, children,” he said. “You must give yourselves time to adjust to your new home. You’ve only been there a few days.”

“We’ve been there long enough to know Count Olaf is a bad man,” Colin said.

Mr. Poe sighed, and looked at each of the nine children. His face was kind, but it didn’t look like he really believed what the Baudelaire orphans were saying.

“Are you familiar with the term _in loco parentis_?” he asked.

Klaus frowned. “It sounds like Latin. Something about trains?”

Mr. Poe shook his head. “ _In loco parentis_ means ‘acting in the role of parent,’ ” he said. “It is a legal term and it applies to Count Olaf. Now that you are in his care, the Count may raise you using any methods he sees fit. I’m sorry if your parents did not make you do any household chores, or if you never saw them drink any wine, or if you like their friends better than Count Olaf’s friends, but these are things that you must get used to, as Count Olaf is acting _in loco parentis_. Understand?”

“But he _struck_ Nick!” Lilac said. “Look at his face!”

"That is obviously a rash, not a bruise. Nick, perhaps you ate something you're allergic to."

He glancing down at one of his papers and circled a number. “Whatever Count Olaf has done,” he continued, “he has acted _in loco parentis_ , and there’s nothing I can do about it. Your money will be well protected by myself and by the bank, but Count Olaf’s parenting techniques are his own business. Now, I hate to usher you out posthaste, but I have very much work to do. ‘Posthaste’ means—”

“—means you’ll do nothing to help us,” Colin finished for him, shaking with anger and frustration. He stood up and walked out of the room, followed by the rest of his siblings. They walked out of the bank and stood on the sidewalk, not knowing what to do next.

“What should we do next?” Klaus asked sadly.

“It’s getting late,” Violet said. “We have to go back to Count Olaf’s house.”

“I never want to go back there as long as I live,” said Nick.

Lilac sighed. “We’ll think of something else tomorrow.”

They walked out of the banking district together. As they left, April took one last glance at the square, plain-looking building that was Mulctuary Money Management. She thought of Mr. Poe, and what it meant to act _in loco parentis_ , and the blonde secretary who wore a gold ring exactly like the one on April’s finger.

* * *

The next morning, when the children stumbled sleepily from their bedroom into the kitchen, rather than a note from Count Olaf they found Count Olaf himself.

“Good morning, orphans,” he said. “I have your oatmeal all ready in bowls for you.”

The children took seats at the kitchen table and stared nervously into their oatmeal. Fresh raspberries had been sprinkled on top of each of their portions. The Baudelaire orphans hadn’t had raspberries since their parents died, although they were extremely fond of them.

Nick took one look at his bowl of oatmeal and nodded definitively. “It’s poisoned.”

Count Olaf smiled and plucked a raspberry out of Sunny’s bowl. Looking deliberately at each of the nine children, he popped it into his mouth and ate it.

“Aren’t raspberries delicious?” he asked. “They were my favorite berries when I was your age.”

“We’re all different ages,” said April. She picked up her spoon and cautiously began to eat her oatmeal.

Count Olaf shrugged. “Have you happened to see a white key around the house?” he asked, obviously trying to sound nonchalant. “It belongs to someone very important to me. I thought she had left it in the automobile, but I couldn’t find it there.”

The children shook their heads. They looked at each other, a million unasked questions in their heads.

“No matter,” Count Olaf continued. “I received a phone call yesterday from Mr. Poe. He told me you children had been to see him. He also told me that you appeared to be having some difficulty adjusting to the life I have so graciously provided for you. I’m very sorry to hear that.”

“Is that so?” Violet said carefully. “I’m sorry Mr. Poe bothered you.”

“I’m glad he did,” Count Olaf said, “because I want the three of you to feel at home here, now that I am your father.”

April scoffed in disgust. “You’re not our—”

Violet kicked her under the table.

“Ow!”

“Shut _up_.”

“Lately,” Count Olaf said, “I have been very nervous about my performances with the theater troupe, and I’m afraid I may have acted a bit standoffish. Do you know what that word means?”

“Pure evil,” Lilac muttered under her breath.

“Therefore,” he continued, ignoring her, “to make you feel a little more at home here, I would like to have Violet participate in my next play. Perhaps if you took part in the work I do, you would be less likely to run off complaining to Mr. Poe.”

“In what way would I participate?” Violet asked. 

“Well,” Count Olaf said, his eyes shining brightly, “the play is called _The Marvelous Marriage_ , and it is written by the great playwright Al Funcoot.”

“Olaf,” said Solitude, chewing solemnly on a raspberry.

“We will give only one performance,” said Count Olaf, “on this Friday night. It is about a man who is very brave and intelligent, played by me. In the finale, he marries the young, beautiful woman he loves, in front of a crowd of cheering people.”

“And what will I do?” Violet asked. “I’m very handy with tools, so perhaps I could help you build the set.”

“Build the set? Heavens, no,” Count Olaf said. “A pretty girl like you shouldn’t be working backstage.”

“But I’d like to,” Violet said.

“But I have such an important role for you onstage,” he said. “You are going to play the young woman I marry.”

Violet felt her oatmeal and raspberries shift around in her stomach. She had a sinking feeling that Count Olaf had a more terrible plan than simply casting her in a play. She thought of what the bald man with the long nose had said about Count Olaf wrecking her face.

“It’s a very important role,” he continued, “although you have no lines other than ‘I do,’ which you will say when Justice Strauss asks you if you will have me.”

“Justice Strauss?” April said. “What does she have to do with it?”

“She has agreed to play the part of the judge,” Count Olaf said. “I asked Justice Strauss to participate because I wanted to be neighborly, as well as fatherly.”

“Count Olaf,” Violet said, and then stopped herself. She knew she had to act carefully, like a performer in a play. She needed to argue her way out of playing his bride without making him angry.

“ _Father_ ,” she said, “I’m not sure I’m talented enough to perform professionally. I would hate to disgrace your good name and the name of Al Funcoot. Plus I’ll be very busy in the next few weeks working on my inventions, and…”

She glanced at Colin, who was good at this sort of thing. He mouthed the words “roast beef.”

"… and learning how to prepare roast beef.”

Count Olaf reached out one of his spidery hands and stroked Violet on the chin.

“You will participate in this theatrical performance," he said. "I would prefer it if you would _volunteer_ to do so, but as I believe Mr. Poe explained to you, I can order you to participate and you must obey.”

Violet shivered. After a long silence, Olaf finally let go, stood up, and left without a word. The Baudelaire children listened to his heavy footsteps recede.

“He must be up to something,” Colin said as soon as Count Olaf was gone.

“Gamos,” Solitude agreed.

“You don’t think those berries were poisoned, do you?” Klaus asked worriedly.

“No,” Violet said quietly. “Count Olaf is after the fortune we’ll inherit. Killing us would do him no good.”

“ _Can_ the berries be poisoned?” Nick asked. “As in, can we poison them and serve them to him?”

“ _No._ ”

“And what good does it do him to have you be in his stupid play, anyway?”

“I have my suspicions,” Violet admitted miserably. She stood up and started washing out the oatmeal bowls. “We need to learn something more about inheritance law.”

“I guess we could ask Mr. Poe about it,” Klaus said doubtfully as he dried the dishes. “He knows all those Latin legal phrases.”

“But Mr. Poe would probably call Count Olaf again, and then he’d know we were on to him,” Colin pointed out. “Maybe we should try to talk to Justice Strauss. She’s a judge, so she must know all about the law.”

“But she’s also Count Olaf’s neighbor,” April replied, “and she might tell him that we had asked.”

“Book!” Sensible shouted suddenly.

“That’s very sensible, Sensible,” said Lilac. “Surely Justice Strauss would have a book on inheritance law. She is a judge, after all.”

“Count Olaf didn’t leave us any chores to do,” Violet said, “so I suppose we’re free to visit Justice Strauss and her library. Let’s go.”

* * *

“Baudelaires!” said Justice Strauss. “I’m so happy to see you. Are you here to continue your research?”

“Actually, Justice Strauss, we’re here to research something else,” April said. “Do you have any books on the theater?”

“Ah, the theater,” Justice Strauss said, leading the Baudelaire children to a tall shelf. “I’ve always wanted to perform onstage, ever since I was a little girl. And now Count Olaf has given me the opportunity to live my lifelong dream.”

“Violet, Lilac, and I can read all the books on theater,” April said to her brothers. “You three can tackle the books on law.”

“Good idea,” said Colin. “Justice Strauss, do you have anything on local ordinances?”

“Ah, local ordinances,” she said. “Wait, are you sure? Even _I_ don’t like reading such books, and I work in law.”

“I actually find those books quite fascinating,” Colin said. “I’m considering a career in law.”

“You already dress like a lawyer,” Nick said.

“Well, to each his own,” Justice Strauss said. “There are countless types of books in this world, which makes good sense because there are countless types of people.”

“Do you have any law books that Sensible could read?” Colin asked.

“I’m afraid not,” said Justice Strauss. “Books about the law are very long, very dull, and very difficult to read. Maybe Sensible, Solitude, and Sunny would like to come help me with the gardening.”

Sensible looked up. “Carrot?”

“Cucumerina!” Solitude shrieked, which probably meant, “I’d much prefer gardening to sitting around watching my siblings struggle through books about law and theater.”

Lilac handed Sunny to Justice Strauss. “Make sure she doesn’t eat any dirt.”

“Loam!” Sunny objected, which probably meant, “Dirt? I’m past that phase!”

“Of course I will,” Justice Strauss said, Sunny in her arms. Before leaving the library, she paused.

“Nick, what happened to your face?”

Without meaning to, Nick’s hand flew up to his cheek, trying to cover the bruise.

“We’re trying to find out,” said April.

“Well,” Justice Strauss said, “I do have a section on rashes. It’s right next to Chinese cars.”

She left the library with Sunny, followed by Sensible and Solitude. The remaining Baudelaires looked at each other and sighed.

“She’s stagestruck,” Colin said. “She won’t believe that Count Olaf is up to something, no matter what.”

“I think I found something,” said Klaus. He held up a thick book titled _Inheritance Law and Its Implications_. “Colin, Nick, help me read this.”

“They’ll do nothing of the kind.” A voice coming from the doorway startled Klaus. “Count Olaf sent me to look for you. You are to return to the house immediately.”

Klaus turned and saw the hook-handed man standing in the doorway.

“What are you doing in this musty old room, anyway?” he asked, walking over to where Klaus was sitting. Narrowing his eyes, he read the title of one of the books.

“ _Inheritance Law and Its Implications?_ ” he said sharply. “Why are you reading that?”

“Why do you think we’re reading it?” Klaus said.

“I’ll tell you what I think.” The man put one of his terrible hooks on Klaus’s shoulder.

“Hey!” Nick started toward him, but the hook-handed man batted him away like a feather. He curled one of his metal hooks around Nick’s arm and pulled him closer.

“I think you should never be allowed inside this library again, at least until Friday,” he said. “We don’t want any little boys getting big ideas. Now, where are your sisters and those hideous babies?”

“In the garden,” Colin said. “Why don’t you go and get them?”

The man leaned over until his face was just inches from Colin’s, so close that the man’s features blurred.

“Listen to me very carefully,” he said. “The only reason Count Olaf hasn’t torn you limb from limb is that he hasn’t gotten hold of your money. He allows you to live while he works out his plans. But ask yourself this, you little bookworms: What reason will he have to keep you alive after he has your money? What do you think will happen to you then?”

Colin froze. He had never been so terrified in all his life. Nick found that his arms and legs were shaking uncontrollably. Klaus’s mouth was making strange sounds, like Sunny always did, as he struggled to find something to say.

“When the time comes,” the hook-handed man said smoothly, ignoring Nick’s shaking and Klaus’s noises, “I believe Count Olaf just might leave you three to me. So if I were you, I’d start acting a little nicer. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to fetch your poor orphan siblings.”

Colin felt his body go limp as the hook-handed man left the room, and he sat down for a moment to catch his breath. Nick sat beside him, pale-faced and shaking. But Klaus didn’t sit down. He untucked his shirt and put the book on inheritance law inside, hastily retucking it just as the hook-handed man reentered the library, escorting Sensible and Solitude, and carrying Sunny.

“I’m ready to go,” Klaus said quickly, and he walked out the door before the man could get a good look at him. He walked quickly ahead of his siblings, hoping that nobody would notice the book-shaped lump in his shirt.


	5. “A Stick Behind A Stubborn Mule”

Late at night, after his sisters had gone to bed, Klaus pulled the book out from under his shirt. He struck a match from a box that Sensible had found downstairs, which illuminated the room with a strange green light.

Nick passed his fingers through the dark green smoke drifting through the air. “Weird.”

“Never mind about the smoke.” Klaus opened _Inheritance Law and Its Implications_ to the index. “Where should we start?”

“There’s a section on nuptial law. Page 392,” Colin said. “The word ‘nuptial’ means relating to marriage.”

“I _know_ what ‘nuptial’ means,” Klaus snapped. Seeing Colin’s hurt expression in the candlelight, he sighed. “Sorry. I’m just so nervous.”

“Anxious,” Nick corrected.

“There actually isn’t really a difference—”

“Just turn to the page, Klaus.”

Klaus turned to the page.

“ ‘The laws of marriage in this community are very simple,’ ” Colin read out loud. “ ‘The requirements are as follows: the presence of a judge, a statement of “I do” by both the bride and the groom, and the signing of an explanatory document in the bride’s own hand.’ So if Violet says ‘I do’ and signs a piece of paper while Justice Strauss is in the room, then she is legally married.”

“That couldn’t possibly be Count Olaf’s plan,” Klaus said. “Violet is only fifteen. She isn’t old enough to get married.”

“But look here,” said Nick. “She can get married if she has the permission of her legal guardian, acting _in loco parentis_. So Count Olaf could force her to marry him, even though she’s under eighteen.”

“But why would he even want to marry her?” Colin said.

“Because he can get our fortune that way,” Klaus said. “Read this. ‘A legal husband has titular and practical control over any relevant fiduciaries, resulting in aggregate financial dominion over any spousal holdings.’ According to this book, a legal husband has the right to control any money in the possession of his legal wife.”

He closed the book. The three brothers looked at each other, the terrible realization dawning on them.

“He’s going to marry Violet for real,” Colin said, “to gain control of the Baudelaire fortune.”

They looked across the room at the curtain-less window, where white moonlight was streaming in. Violet was sitting on the windowsill, staring up at the tower that they were forbidden to enter. She had been sitting there since the children had returned from Justice Strauss’s library.

“She knows,” Nick said quietly. “She knew the whole time.”

A gentle gust of wind blew out the match. The boys didn’t see, in the pitch-black darkness, that Violet was tying up her hair with a ribbon.

* * *

Nick slammed _Inheritance Law and Its Implications_ onto Count Olaf’s desk, making Count Olaf jump in surprise.

“Hello, orphan,” he said. “You’re up early.”

“We’ve found out your plan, asshole.”

Count Olaf raised his one long eyebrow. “Watch your language, boy. Or I might be forced to give you a matching bruise on your left side.”

“I’m not afraid of you.”

“Oh, I think you are.”

“I’m not afraid of you,” said Nick, “because I know what you’re up to.”

“Me? I’m just having my morning coffee, although I can’t seem to find the sugar bowl, which is problematic if it’s going to be served at the performance. Does Violet like coffee?”

“She prefers tea.”

Olaf scoffed. “Of course she does. It runs in the family."

“What does that even—you know what, that’s not important. What’s important is that we know your plan, thanks to this book.”

“Is that so?” Count Olaf said. “And what is my plan, you little runt?”

Nick ignored the insult. “The only nuptial requirements are a statement of active acquiescence by both participants, utilizing _in loco parentis_ if necessary, and the signing of an explanatory document in the bride’s own hand," he said, trying to use complicated words to sound like Colin, who could always get his way when arguing a point.

“Let me give you a piece of advice,” Count Olaf said. “If you use fancy-pants words first thing in the morning, you’re going to end up a very lonely man.”

“I figured out your scheme. You’re not going to marry Violet figuratively; you’re going to marry her literally! This play won’t be pretend. It will be real and legally binding.”

Count Olaf laughed. “What a silly idea! Your sister isn’t old enough to get married.”

“That’s what we thought at first,” said Nick. “But her legal guardian—that’s you—can give permission for Violet to be married, even though she’s underage.”

“I wouldn’t marry your sister if she were the last orphan on earth,” Count Olaf said. “A man like myself can acquire any number of beautiful women who don’t complain about doing their chores. What’s in it for me?”

“ ‘A legal husband,’ ” Nick read out loud, “ ‘has titular and practical control over any relevant fiduciaries, resulting in aggregate financial dominion over any spousal holdings.’ You’re going to marry my sister to gain control of the Baudelaire fortune! Or at least, that’s what you planned to do. But when I show this information to Mr. Poe, your play will _not_ be performed, and you will go to jail!”

Count Olaf’s eyes grew very shiny, but he continued to smirk at Nick. This was surprising. Nick had guessed that once he announced what he knew, Count Olaf would have been very angry, even violent. But Count Olaf just sat there calmly.

“I guess you’ve found me out,” he said simply. “I suppose you’re right: I’ll go to prison, and you and the other orphans will go free. So what will you do next?”

Nick got up from his chair. “I’ll go tell my sisters.”

“Don’t bother,” said Count Olaf. “The bald man has locked the door.”

Nick froze.

“That’s better,” said Count Olaf. “Now, I have heard you’re quite a reader. Tell me, have you read any books about trains?”

* * *

“Where’s Nick?”

“Confronting Count Olaf,” Colin said as he helped Violet down from the windowsill. “We figured out his plan. Although I think you figured it out much earlier than we did.”

“His plan?” Lilac echoed.

“Colin, Nick, and I stayed up all night reading,” Klaus said, “and we discovered what Count Olaf is up to. Violet, he plans to marry you for real, when you and Justice Strauss and everyone all think it’s just a play, and once he’s your husband he’ll have control of our parents’ money and he can dispose of us.”

Violet nodded solemnly. “That’s what I suspected.”

“How can he marry Violet for real?” Lilac asked. “It’s only a play.”

“The only legal requirements of marriage in this community,” Colin explained, “are both the bride and the groom saying ‘I do,’ and the bride signing a document in her own hand in the presence of a judge.”

“Who is in this case,” Violet said, “Justice Strauss.”

“But surely Violet’s not old enough to get married,” April said. “She’s only fifteen.”

“Girls under the age of eighteen,” Klaus said, “can marry if they have the permission of their legal guardian. That’s Count Olaf.”

“Oh no!” Solitude cried, which probably meant, “How terrible! What can we do?”

“We’re not sure,” said Colin. “We thought about it all night, but we couldn’t think of any way out of this.”

“We can show the law book to Mr. Poe,” Lilac said, “and he’ll finally believe us that Count Olaf is up to no good.”

“Mr. Poe will be of no help to us,” said Klaus. “He didn’t listen to us when we visited him the first time, and he won’t listen to us now.”

“Kill Olaf,” Sensible suggested sensibly. She pointed to the blackened match lying on the floor. “Can’t marry if he’s dead.”

“We’re not killing anyone,” Lilac said firmly.

Sensible pouted. “Why?”

“Because if we kill Count Olaf,” Lilac explained, “we’ll be no better than he is.”

“Worth it.”

“I thought about it all night too,” Violet said, “and I came up with a plan. I can hide Sunny under my veil during the wedding. She can destroy the document with her teeth. Then I won’t be able to sign it.”

“Sunny won’t chew paper if she can help it,” said Lilac, “but I guess this calls for drastic measures. What do you think about that plan, Sunny?”

There was silence.

“Sunny?”

Klaus walked over to the lump of curtains. He pulled away the top fold of the curtains to wake up the youngest Baudelaire child. But underneath the curtain, there was nothing but more curtain. He moved aside all the layers, but his little sister was nowhere to be found.

“ _Sunny!_ ” he yelled, looking around the room. The Baudelaires began to help him search. They looked in every corner, under the bed, and even inside the cardboard box. But Sunny was gone.

“Where can she be?” Lilac asked worriedly. “She’s not the type to run off.”

“Where can she be indeed?” said a voice behind them, and the Baudelaires turned around. Count Olaf was standing in the doorway, watching the seven children as they searched the room. His eyes were shining brighter than they ever had, and he was still smiling like he’d just said a joke.

“Yes,” Count Olaf continued, “it certainly is strange to find a child missing. Especially one so small and helpless. When did you see her last?”

“Where’s Sunny?” Lilac cried. “What have you done with her?”

Count Olaf continued to speak as if he hadn’t heard Lilac. “But then again, one sees strange things every day. In fact, if you orphans follow me out to the backyard, I think we will all see something rather unusual.”

The Baudelaire children didn’t say anything, but followed Count Olaf through the house and out the back door to the small, scraggly yard. Violet shivered, still in her nightgown, but she saw nothing unusual.

“You’re not looking in the right place,” Count Olaf said. “For children who read so much, you’re remarkably unintelligent.”

He pointed to the high tower. Just barely visible in its one lone window was something that looked like a large birdcage.

“Oh no,” Sensible said in a small, scared voice. It _was_ a birdcage, dangling from the tower window like a flag in the wind, with a small and frightened Sunny inside it. There was a large piece of tape across her mouth and ropes tied around her body. She was utterly trapped.

“Let her go!” Colin shouted. “She’s done nothing to you! She is an _infant_!”

Count Olaf sat down on a stump. “If you really want me to let her go, I will. But surely even a stupid brat like you might realize that if I let her go—or, more accurately, if I ask my associate to let her go—poor little Sunny might not survive the fall down to the ground. That’s a thirty-foot tower, which is a very long way for a very little person to fall, even when she’s inside a cage. But if you insist—”

“No!” Klaus cried. “Don’t!”

“Well, what do you want me to do? First you’re telling me to let her go, then you’re telling me to not let her go. Which one will it be?”

Violet looked into Count Olaf’s eyes, and then at her sister. She pictured Sunny toppling from the tower and onto the ground.

“Please,” she said to Olaf. “She’s just a baby. We’ll do anything, _anything_ , just don’t harm her.”

“ _Anything?_ ” Count Olaf asked, his eyebrow rising. “Would you, for instance, consider marrying me during tomorrow night’s performance?”

Violet stared at him. She felt as if she was about to be sick.

“While you were busy reading books and making accusations,” Count Olaf said, “I had one of my quietest, sneakiest assistants skulk into your bedroom and steal little Sunny away. She is perfectly safe, for now. But I consider her to be a stick behind a stubborn mule.”

“Our sister is not a stick,” Colin said.

“A stubborn mule,” Count Olaf continued, ignoring him, “does not move in the direction its owner wants it to. In that way, it is like you children, who insist on mucking up my plans. Any animal owner will tell you that a stubborn mule will move in the proper direction if there is a carrot in front of it, and a stick behind it.”

“Carrot?” Sensible said, more afraid than curious.

“It will move toward the carrot, because it wants the reward of food, and away from the stick, because it does not want the punishment of pain. Likewise, you will do what I say, to avoid the punishment of the loss of your sister, and because you want the reward of surviving this experience. Now, Violet, let me ask you again: will you marry me?”

Violet swallowed and looked down at Count Olaf’s tattoo. She could not bring herself to answer.

“Come now,” Count Olaf said, his voice feigning kindness. He reached out a hand and stroked Violet’s hair. “Would it be so terrible to be my bride, to live in my house for the rest of your life? You’re such a lovely girl. After the marriage I wouldn’t dispose of you like your brothers and sisters."

She shrank away from him. "I'd rather die with them than be your wife."

"And if you still insist on not marrying me," he went on, "it would not be too difficult to marry another Baudelaire, and plan an unfortunate… _accident_ for you. It would really be too bad if a train came along, just as you were crossing the tracks to get to your wedding ceremony. But perhaps it would be not a tragedy, but a new opportunity. After all, Lilac might grow into your white dress in a year or two.”

He removed his fingers from Violet’s hair and put his arm around Lilac instead.

"I'm not bluffing," he said. "Your brother Nick has conveniently told me all about this city’s train schedule."

“What have you done with Nick?” Violet asked, afraid of the answer.

“Hardly anything at all,” he said. “It didn’t take much to get him to talk.”

A wave of fear washed over Violet. She imagined living every day with Count Olaf, doing chores for him, cooking for him, sleeping beside him. But then she looked up at Sunny, crying in the birdcage. She looked down at Lilac, who was frozen with fear in Olaf’s grip. She imagined Nick, wherever he was. And knew what her answer had to be.

“If you let Sunny go,” she said finally, “I will marry you.”

“Mazel tov!” Count Olaf’s associates cheered from the doorway. They threw handfuls of white confetti into the air.

“Violet, no!” Lilac shouted. Count Olaf clapped his free hand over her mouth.

“I will let Sunny go,” he said, “after tomorrow night’s performance. In the meantime, she will remain in the tower for safekeeping. And, as a warning, my associates will stand guard at the door to the tower staircase, in case you were getting any ideas.”

“You’re a terrible man,” Colin said.

Count Olaf merely smiled again. “I may be a terrible man,” he said, “but I have been able to concoct a foolproof way of getting your fortune, which is more than you’ve been able to do. You may have read more books than I have, but it didn’t help you gain the upper hand in this situation.”

The children reluctantly began to follow Count Olaf into the house, but Violet stayed still as a statue. Lilac watched her tie her hair up in a ribbon, staring at Sunny’s cage. She didn’t even glance at Lilac. This was a mission for Violet to do, and for Violet to do alone.

* * *

After entering the house, Count Olaf pulled April aside. He was holding Mrs. Baudelaire’s ring—the same ring that April always took off at night and placed on the floor beside the bed that she and Lilac shared.

“Were you in our _room_?” she asked, disgusted.

“Perhaps,” he said. “Tell me, girl: Where did you get this ring?”

“It was our mother’s,” she spat. She tried to grab the ring, but he held it high out of her reach.

“Well, I’ve requisitioned it,” he said. “I’m going to present it to your sister on our joyful wedding day. It’s a ring fit for a duchess.” He smiled wickedly. “Or a countess.”

She tried to hold back frightened tears. “Violet will _never_ marry you.”

“We’ll see about that.” Count Olaf shrugged. “And if it doesn’t work out—well, at least I have two backups.”

“You won’t get away with this,” April said through gritted teeth.

“Oh,” he said, using a hackneyed phrase. “I already have.”

She shuddered, then followed her siblings upstairs to their room, where an unexpected but certainly welcome visitor was waiting.

“Nick!” Lilac shouted. Nick was sitting on a pile of blankets, looking tired and pale but more or less intact. He let Lilac hug him for a few seconds before scooting away.

“Gross.”

“Are you okay?” Violet asked.

“I’m fine,” he said. Violet didn’t argue, though she could see a bruise that had definitely not been there before peeking out from underneath his shirt collar.

“Where’s Sunny?” Nick asked.

The Baudelaires fell silent.

“Violet,” Nick said, “what happened to Sunny?”

“Count Olaf has her trapped in the tower,” Violet said. “He said he would drop her if I didn’t agree to marry him.”

“Please don’t tell me you said yes,” Nick said.

Violet glanced at Lilac. “I had no other choice.”

She sat down and started fiddling with the spyglass that Colin had left on the floor. When she shook it, something large—some sort of paper lining?—moved inside the spyglass. It was trapped, just like she was. She rattled it around, growing more and more frustrated with each complaining noise it made.

“Did you think about what Count Olaf would do to us? What he would do to _you_?” Nick stood up. “We should have killed him. We should have poisoned the puttanesca sauce. We should have axed him while he slept. We should have smashed his head in with that spyglass Colin won’t shut up about—”

“Nick, that’s enough,” Lilac said firmly. “You’re scaring Solitude.”

He sighed and sat back down. “I’m sorry.”

“Cake,” Solitude said, which probably meant, “Perhaps it won’t be so bad. Marie Antoinette married the Prince of France when she was only fourteen.”

“She was beheaded, Sol,” Lilac said gently. “Maybe Count Olaf will be kinder to us once he has our fortune.”

“Haha,” Nick said, and everyone knew he meant, “Not likely.”

Violet suddenly kicked the pile of rocks. The spyglass fell to the ground and spun around several times, the paper inside rattling furiously.

“It’s not fair,” she hissed. “It’s not _fucking_ fair.”

She turned on her heel and left.

“I’d better go talk to her,” Lilac said.

She found Violet sitting at the top of the stairs, playing with her hair ribbon. She sat down next to her.

“You shouldn’t swear in front of Sensible and Solitude.”

“Fuck that.”

Lilac sighed. “I know you think I’m pretty stupid—”

“I don’t think you’re stupid.”

She blinked. “You don’t?”

“I don’t think you’re stupid, but you’re fine with spending your life fixing what’s broken. You don’t care about anything as long as Sensible and Solitude and everyone else are okay. You’ve never had any thoughts or wants or inventions of your own.”

“And what do you even want? What perfect life do you want to invent for yourself?”

“Not this!” Violet shouted. “This isn’t right. This isn’t how I imagined it would be.”

She sobbed into her lap, angry tears getting caught in her tangled hair.

“Why did you say yes?” Lilac asked quietly. “I would have done it instead. I would have agreed to marry Count Olaf, if it meant keeping Sunny safe.”

“But,” said Violet, “you never would have forgiven me.”

“Vi—”

“And anyway it doesn’t matter what you would have done,” said Violet. “We can’t change the past. I’m going to marry Count Olaf tomorrow. I volunteered.”

Lilac shook her head. “We’re not going to let that happen. You were right, I’m good at fixing what’s broken. We can fix this.”

“How?”

Lilac took Violet’s hair ribbon from her hands. With her own quiet fingers, she braided her sister’s black hair, tying it off at the bottom with the ribbon. Then she pulled her own hair into a ponytail, not caring about the hair that came loose and framed her face.

“There’s always something. Come on.”

She helped Violet stand up. Violet smiled slightly and brushed Lilac’s hair out of her face.

As they entered the bedroom, Nick appeared in the doorway. “Why is Violet allowed to say ‘fuck’ and I’m not?”

“Because Violet’s the oldest,” Lilac said, “and she’s a teenager.”

“So when I become a teenager, can I say—”

“Absolutely not.”

“Buzzkill.”


	6. "Let Me Keep My Promise"

That night, Violet was the Baudelaire orphan staying up, her hair still in Lilac’s braid, working by green firelight. She rolled the sleeping Sensible and Solitude onto the floor, then gathered up the curtains that had been their bed. Then, she gently tugged the three blankets away from Colin and Klaus.

“Psst.”

Violet looked up from her work and saw Colin sitting up.

“Go back to bed, Colin.”

“Sunny must be so frightened.”

“We’re all frightened, Colin. You should get some sleep.”

“But you’re dismantling my bed.”

“Use the babies’ bed.”

“You took their bed too.”

“You stayed up all last night trying to find out Count Olaf’s plot,” Violet said. “It’s my turn.”

Colin sighed. “I didn’t help us.”

“Yes, you did,” Violet said. “You just didn’t finish the job.”

Then Colin began to cry, and Violet wasn’t sure what to do. She sat down next to him, trying to remember what Lilac did when one of their siblings was upset. She remembered that Lilac told them stories.

“Remember,” she said, “when our parents first brought Sensible home?”

“She bit the doorknob off the nursery,” Colin said. “It was Nick’s favorite doorknob, too.”

“Mother and Father made me promise to always look after you—all of you,” said Violet. “They made me promise to make sure you didn’t get into any trouble.”

“That's a lot to ask of one person,” he said. “I'm sorry they made you promise that.”

“That doesn't matter,” she said.“Let me keep my promise.”

He shook his head. “I don’t want you to keep your promise. I want to help.”

Violet sighed. She thought about it. Then she handed him an armful of blankets.

“Wake up April,” she said. “You two are going to case the joint.”

“We’re going to observe a particular location in order to formulate a plan?” Colin asked. He shook April awake.

“Exactly,” said Violet. “Go to the tower stairs. Find out if there’s any way to sneak past the guard.”

Holding the curtains and sweaters together, the twins walked to the door to the tower stairs, where the henchperson of indeterminate gender was standing guard. They looked at the twins suspiciously.

“Might I bring these blankets to my sister, to make her more comfortable during the night?” April asked politely.

The henchperson shook their head.

“You seem like a decent person,” Colin tried. “Don’t you think it’s unfair that Count Olaf is forcing Violet to marry him?”

They shrugged. “I do think, even in changing context, that marriage is an inherently patriarchal construction that is likely to further the hegemonic juggernaut that is problematizing—”

“But you’re not going to help us.”

“No.”

The twins returned to Violet with heavy hearts.

Violet was sitting on the floor, working on an invention. She had taken down the metal curtain rod from above the window. Using one of the rocks, she had broken the curtain rod into two pieces. She had then bent each piece of the rod into several sharp angles. Then Violet had taken down the painting of the eye and removed a small piece of wire from the back of the frame. She had used the wire to connect the two pieces together, making what looked like a large metal spider.

Without a word, she took the blankets from the twins’ arms. Working quickly and quietly, she began to tear these into long, narrow strips, and to tie the strips together.

“Is that the Devil’s Tongue Knot, the one invented by group of female Finnish pirates back in the fifteenth century?” April asked.

Violet nodded without looking up from her invention. The Devil’s Tongue was a very useful knot, and when Violet tied the cloth strips together, end to end, it formed a sort of rope. She tied one end of it to the metal spider and looked at her handiwork.

“I see!” said April. “It’s a—”

Holding the invention, Violet brushed past her brother and sister. She paused in the doorway.

“Hide under the bed.”

“Why?” Colin asked.

“Just do it. I have a bad feeling about something.”

She closed the door behind her.

“—grappling hook,” April finished. But no one except Colin heard her.

Once outside, Violet realized her plan was more difficult than she had thought. But although the night was quiet, windy, and dark, she knew she had to try. Using her right hand, she threw the grappling hook as high and as hard as she could, and waited to see if it would catch onto something.

 _Clang!_ The hook made a loud noise as it hit the tower, but it didn’t stick to anything and came crashing back down. Her heart pounding, Violet stood still, wondering if Count Olaf or one of his associates would notice the noise and investigate. But nobody arrived, so Violet tried again.

She tried three more times. _Clang! Clang! Clang!_ Once, when the grappling hook fell down, it tore a bloody gash into her right shoulder. Gritting her teeth in pain, Violet simply used her left hand to throw the hook again.

 _Maybe,_ she thought to herself, _this is what will make me ambidextrous._

 _Clang!_ The usual _clang!_ sound stopped halfway through, and Violet saw the hook wasn’t falling. Nervously, she gave the rope a good yank, and it stayed put. The grappling hook had worked.

She closed her eyes and began to climb the rope. She had almost made it to Sunny’s cage when she opened her eyes and saw a hook. It wasn’t her grappling hook. It was the hook that her grappling hook had snagged on. It was one of the hooks, she realized with growing horror, of the hook-handed man.

* * *

“Get up.”

Lilac blinked her eyes open to come face-to-face with one of the white-faced women. She opened her mouth to scream, but the woman shoved a rag into her mouth. Lilac tasted cheap wine and cigarette smoke.

The white-faced woman pulled Klaus, already gagged, to his feet. The other woman stood in the doorway, holding a terrified Nick.

“Leave the babies,” she said. “The boss wants to keep them.”

“What for?”

She shrugged. “Something to do with sticks and mules.”

Lilac thrashed in the white-faced woman’s grip, trying to see if any of her other siblings had been captured. She ripped the gag off her face.

“Where’s A—”

Klaus elbowed her in the ribs, harder than Lilac thought he was capable of. He jerked his head toward the spot where the bed met the floor. A hand peeked out from underneath the bed. April’s hand.

“Weren’t there more of you?” the woman holding Nick said.

“No,” said Klaus, his voice muffled by the gag. “It’s only us.”

The other woman sighed in disgust. “Send the bald man to sweep the orphans’ room,” she said into a walkie-talkie. “There might be a few orphans we missed.”

They started half-leading, half-dragging the children toward the door.

“Where are you taking us?” Lilac shouted.

“You’ll see when we get there,” the women said in unison as they pushed the children down the stairs. They forced the children out the front door and into a tiny gray automobile. Lilac looked desperately toward Justice Strauss’s house, but all the lights were out. There was no one awake to help them.

One of the white-faced women took the driver’s seat. She stomped down on the accelerator, sending the automobile careening down the street. Whenever they hit a bump in the road (which was often), the littlest elf on the dashboard burst into maniacal giggles.

The white-faced woman drove for at least an hour, then brought the automobile to an abrupt stop in the middle of a set of train tracks in front of the Last Chance General Store.

“Let’s stop for a treat,” she said.

“Children like treats, don’t they?” the other woman said.

“Soda, soda, soda,” said the first woman. “What flavors?”

“How about parsley?”

The white-faced women got out of the car, cackling. They locked the doors and disappeared into the convenience store.

Nick tore off his gag. “Listen,” he said. “Count Olaf made me tell him the train schedule that I memorized. I think he’s planning to run us over with a train.”

“But he can’t kill us,” Klaus said. “He needs…”

His voice trailed away. “Oh no.”

“He only needs Violet to get our fortune,” Lilac said, “and Violet has already agreed to marry him. He doesn’t need the rest of us anymore.”

“So he’s going to get rid of us,” Nick said, “and make it look like an accident.”

“Nick, this is important,” Klaus said. “Do you know what time the next train passes through this area?”

He shook his head. “I don’t even know where we are.”

Nick glanced around the car, and blinked in surprise when he saw the passenger side door. “Lilac, where’d the locks go?”

Lilac tried to take deep, steady breaths. She braided her hair with trembling fingers. “It’s okay. We’re going to be okay. We just need to pick the locks on this automobile.”

“Do you know how to pick a lock?” Klaus asked.

“I know how to throw a rock through a window.”

“Well, we don’t have any rocks.”

Lilac looked out the window. “We could really use a Molotov cocktail.”

* * *

_If we had any kerosene,_ Violet thought, _I could make a Molotov cocktail with one of these bottles._

She looked around the dim and messy tower room. There were a few chairs and a handful of candles which were giving off flickering shadows. Littered all over the floor were empty wine bottles and dirty dishes. There were scraps of paper on which Count Olaf had written his evil ideas, lying in piles on top of _Inheritance Law and Its Implications_. But there was nothing Violet could use for an invention.

“Writing down all of your evil ideas in one place is going to backfire on you one day,” Violet thought aloud. “You might have to redo an entire years-long plan from scratch because of it.”

Sunny couldn’t speak because of the tape over her mouth, but she clapped her hands to show she agreed. Across the room, the hook-handed man was talking with Count Olaf on a walkie-talkie.

“Boss, it’s me,” he said. “Your blushing bride just climbed up here to try and rescue the biting brat.”

He paused as Count Olaf said something. “I don’t know. With some sort of rope.”

“It was a grappling hook,” Violet said, and tore off a sleeve of her nightgown to make a bandage for her shoulder. “I made it myself.”

“She says it was a grappling hook,” the hook-handed man said into the walkie-talkie. “I don’t know, boss. Yes, boss. Yes, boss, of course I understand she’s _yours_. Yes, boss.”

He pressed a button to disconnect the line, and then turned to face Violet. “Count Olaf is very displeased with his bride.”

“I’m not his bride,” Violet said bitterly.

“Very soon you will be,” the hook-handed man said, wagging his hook at her.

Suddenly, a trapdoor in the floor opened. The bald man with the long nose shoved April and Colin into the tower room. Count Olaf followed close behind, holding Sensible and Solitude.

“We found these orphans hiding under the bed,” the bald man said.

Count Olaf growled. “I guess we’ll have to hide them in the performance and get rid of them later,” he said. “They can be cheering people in the crowd.”

“We’ll never participate in your play,” said April.

“You know, some people say that the hardest job in the world is raising a child,” Count Olaf said. “But it is nothing compared to conceiving, writing, directing, producing, and performing in a theatrical presentation for the purpose of stealing their dead parents’ fortune.”

“You’ll never touch our fortune!” Colin shouted.

“Oh, Colin.” He sauntered over to Violet and squeezed her injured shoulder, making her wince in pain. “I’ll touch whatever I want.”

He left through the trapdoor, his hand sticky with Violet’s blood. Colin and April rushed over to Violet, who was looking pale.

“I tried to rescue Sunny,” she said, “using an invention of mine to climb up the tower. But the hook-handed man caught me.”

Colin went over to the window and looked down at the ground. “It’s so high up,” he said. “You must have been terrified.”

“It was very scary,” she admitted, “but not as scary as the thought of marrying Count Olaf.”

“Losiento,” Sunny mumbled through the tape, which probably meant, “I’m sorry your invention didn’t work.”

“The invention worked fine,” Violet said. “I just got caught.”

“It’s going to be okay, Sunny,” said Colin. “Just hang in there.”

“Bofo!” Sunny said, which probably meant, “Seriously?”

“Count Olaf took Mother’s ring,” April said forlornly. “He’s going to use it as your wedding ring, Violet.”

“Then I’ll give it back to you as soon as the wedding is over,” Violet said.

“Count Olaf will never let you,” said April. “It was the only thing we still had that belonged to our parents.”

“Not quite,” said Colin. “We still have this.”

He drew the cylindrical spyglass from his pocket.

Sensible stroked the spyglass. “Fire.”

April swatted her hand away. “No, you can’t light this one on fire. It’s special.”

“And it’s made of metal,” Violet added. “If you tried to set it on fire, it wouldn’t burn. It would just melt into a puddle and ruin your clothes.”

“What do you suppose it does?” April asked.

“A spyglass is a small telescope,” Colin said, “most often used to magnify objects. But I don’t see how it could help Violet get out of _The Marvelous Marriage_.”

“Maybe we don’t need the spyglass,” April said to Violet. “You could just say ‘I don’t’ instead of ‘I do.’ ”

“But then Count Olaf would order Sunny dropped off the tower,” said Colin.

“I certainly would,” Count Olaf said, and the children jumped. He opened the trapdoor, and the hook-handed man climbed in behind him. He smiled and waved a hook at the children.

“Come, orphans,” Count Olaf said. “It is time for the big event. My associate here will stay behind in this room, and we will keep in constant contact through our walkie-talkies. If anything goes wrong during tonight’s performance, your sister will be dropped to her death. Come along now.”

The Baudelaire children looked at each other, and then at Sunny, still dangling in her cage, and followed Count Olaf out the door. Violet noticed her hands were trembling, so she put them in her pockets. She felt something cold and smooth in the left-hand pocket, and she pulled it out. It was the rock she had skipped into the ocean, about the right size and shape, with a white letter X scratched into one side.

* * *

“What are we going to do?”

April and Colin stood backstage at Count Olaf’s theater, still in their pajamas, filled with dread as they watched the crew move set pieces, props, and costumes.

Waiting in the wings, Olaf saw the children. He strode towards them, wearing a white powdered wig.

“It’s the end of Act Two! Why aren’t the orphans in their costumes?” he hissed to the two white-faced women, who were sipping bottles of parsley soda. “I saw Geraldine Julienne in the audience, so everything has to be perfect. I can’t have the star reporter of _The Daily Punctilio_ write a bad review of my show again!”

“Isn’t it Al Funcoot’s show?” Colin asked.

Count Olaf growled in frustration and stalked off. The two white-faced women grabbed April and Colin by the wrists. As they brushed past the curtain, April caught a glimpse of a familiar blonde woman sitting high in the mezzanine next to a dark-haired man. They both carried spyglasses, which they were holding like weapons.

The women led the children into a dressing room. The room was dusty but shiny, covered in mirrors and tiny lights so the actors could see better to put on their makeup and wigs, and there were people calling out to one another and laughing as they changed their clothes. The white-faced women pointed to two blue sailor suits that looked like toddlers’ Purim costumes.

“Intermission is in ten minutes,” said one of the women. “Be ready before then.”

They walked out and slammed the door shut.

“I wonder where Violet is,” Colin said. “She must be so frightened.”

“I saw Mr. Poe’s secretary in the audience,” April whispered to Colin as she changed into a sailor suit. “I think she’s here to help us.”

“Maybe she’s just a lover of the theater.”

“Colin, she has a spyglass.”

“Isn’t this exciting?” said a voice, and the children turned to see Justice Strauss, all dressed up in her judge’s robes and powdered wig. She was clutching a small book. “You children look wonderful!”

“So do you,” Colin said. “What’s that book?”

“Why, those are my lines,” Justice Strauss said. “Count Olaf told me to bring a law book and read the real wedding ceremony, in order to make the play as realistic as possible. All you two have to do is cheer, but I have to make quite a speech. This is going to be such fun.”

“You know, what would be fun,” April said carefully, “is if you changed your lines around, just a little.”

Colin’s face lit up. “Yes, Justice Strauss. Be creative. There’s no reason to stick to the legal ceremony. It’s not as if it’s a real wedding.”

Justice Strauss frowned. “I don’t know about that, children,” she said. “I think it would be best to follow Count Olaf’s instructions. After all, he’s in charge.”

“Justice Strauss!” a voice called. “Justice Strauss! Please report to the makeup artist!”

“Oh my word!” she said. “I get to wear makeup!” Justice Strauss had a dreamy expression on her face. “Children, I must go. See you onstage, my dears!”

Justice Strauss ran off, leaving the children to finish changing into their costumes.

“What can we do?” Colin said quietly. “Pretend to be sick? Maybe they’d call off the performance.”

“Count Olaf would know what we were up to,” April replied.

“Act Three of _The Marvelous Marriage_ by Al Funcoot is about to begin!” a man with a clipboard shouted. “Everyone, please, get in your places for Act Three!”

The actors rushed out of the room, and the white-faced women grabbed the children and hustled them out after them. The backstage area was in complete pandemonium.

“Colin!” April shouted over the noise. “Where are Sensible and Solitude?”

He looked around wildly. The younger Baudelaires were nowhere to be found.


	7. "It's Time To Crash A Wedding"

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Lilac, Nick, and Klaus Baudelaire were frantically trying to pry open the doors of Count Olaf’s locked automobile.

“Looks like Count Olaf has been doing some research of his own,” Lilac said. She pulled a thick book titled _Inheritance Law and You: Municipal Statutes_ from underneath the driver’s seat.

“Good to know,” said Klaus. “There are so few books around the house, I honestly wasn’t sure if he was literate.”

Then the ground started to rumble. The wine bottles in the trunk began shaking and clattering against each other. The fork that Nick had wedged beneath the window flew into the air, hitting him in the head. The littlest elf burst into giggles that were so intense it sounded more like the poor plastic elf was choking.

Lilac was the first to see the approaching train.

“Go!” she shouted, as if there was anywhere for the three children to go to.

Nick dove below the driver’s seat and started pushing the pedals. Lilac began pulling levers and pushing buttons at random. Klaus stuck his hand inside the glove compartment.

“He took the keys!”

Suddenly, the telephone rang. Lilac picked it up, confused. The telephone was attached to the automobile with a long wire.

“Count Olaf?” the voice on the other end called out. “Hello? I’m calling you back about that inheritance question you raised.”

“Mr. Poe!” Lilac shouted with relief.

“Thank goodness,” Klaus said.

“Who is this?” Mr. Poe asked.

“It’s Lilac Baudelaire. We’re in Count Olaf’s automobile.”

“Oh, hello, Lilac. Where’s Count Olaf?”

“He’s not here right now, but—”

“You’re driving the automobile alone?”

“No, we’re—”

Nick grabbed the telephone away from his sister and held the receiver to his ear.

“Mr. Poe, we’re on the train tracks and the train is coming!” he shouted.

“Rain is drumming?”

“No, _the train is coming!_ ” Nick said. “We’re going to be hit by a train!”

Mr. Poe broke down into a coughing fit.

“I’ll call you back… when I… get to the bank,” he said between coughs. “Good luck, children!”

The line went dead. Lilac froze, paralyzed with shock and fear.

“Klaus,” she said, “you’ve read books on trains. What do we do?”

Nick stared at her. “Lilac, you’ve been taking apart model train sets since you were literally two years old.”

“I can’t think when I’m stressed!”

“I’ve read about trains in _Anna Karenina_ ,” Klaus said, “and _Murder on the Orient Express_ , and _The Little Engine That Could_. But I haven’t the faintest clue what to do when a train is driving straight toward you.”

Nick closed his eyes and tried to imagine his parents’ library. Trains were in Section 625. That was the section with the model planes on the windowsill and the funny little black seahorse statue. What books had he read in Section 625? _The Great Train_ , _The History of the Iron Horse_ , and… _Tracks, Trains, and Switching Devices_.

“The track switcher,” said Nick. He scrambled to the window. “There!”

Just a few yards away was the track switcher, a small metal lever that could move a train from one railway track to another.

“It’s too far away,” Klaus said.

“No,” Lilac said, pulling her hair into a braid. “There has to be something we can use to pull it.”

“There’s nothing in here.”

Lilac tore open the passenger seat. She felt a nail break as she ripped a spring and the seat belt out of the seat.

“There’s always something,” she said. “Klaus, grab that elf.”

She threaded the seat belt through the spring, then tied the littlest elf to one end of the seat belt.

“Nice and heavy,” she said. Then she threw the elf through the passenger’s side window. The window shattered, showering glass everywhere.

“Let’s escape!”

She held Klaus back. “You’ll cut yourself on the glass. There’s another way. Help me reel the elf in.”

The three Baudelaires pulled the seat belt backward until the spring was coiled against the side of the automobile. Lilac locked her eyes on the track switcher.

“Three, two, one!”

They released the seat belt, and the littlest elf sailed into the air, landing harmlessly on the railroad tracks several feet away from the track switcher. _Clang!_

Of course, Lilac had no way of knowing that only a few hours earlier, her older sister had been doing something very similar, using a homemade grappling hook and a rope made of curtains and itchy clothing.

“Quick, pull it in,” said Lilac.

They tried three more times. _Clang! Clang! Clang!_ With each missed shot, the train drew closer and closer, and Lilac could feel their chances slipping away.

When they reeled in the elf for the fourth time, the train was so close that Klaus could smell the smoke from its engine. His eyes wandered toward the passenger seat, remembering something Count Olaf had mentioned the previous day.

“Li—”

“I _got_ it.”

“I didn’t mean to rush you.”

Lilac took aim and fired. This time, the seat belt wrapped itself around the train switcher and stuck there.

“Nice shot!” Nick said.

“Thanks. Pull!”

The three children tugged on the seat belt as hard as they could, pulling the lever to the left. The train was getting closer, and closer, and closer. Lilac closed her eyes tight, bracing for impact.

But it never came.

“We did it!” Nick shouted. Cautiously, Lilac opened her eyes.

The train had switched to a different track. It was now rolling beside Count Olaf’s automobile, blowing merry puffs of steam.

“Found it!” Klaus pulled something small and white out of the upholstery of the ripped passenger seat. “Skeleton key.”

Lilac snatched it from him, barely stopping to look at the “S.H.” engraved into the key. She shoved the key into the ignition and turned. The automobile roared to life.

“We have to get out of here before the white-faced women notice the train didn’t hit us.”

“Do you even know how to drive?” Nick asked.

“I drove Father’s automobile around the Partial Foods parking lot a few times,” she said. “Seat belts on.”

Nick clambered into the ruined passenger seat. “I call shotgun!”

Lilac put her weight on the accelerator. Nick let out a whoop as the automobile sped shakily down the country road toward Count Olaf’s house.

“It’s time,” said Lilac, “to crash a wedding.”

* * *

“Break,” Solitude said as she led a reluctant Sensible through the crowd, away from their siblings.

“No time for a break,” Sensible said. “Danger. No time for a break.”

“Break,” Solitude repeated obstinately.

She dodged expertly between the legs of audience members and theatergoers milling in the lobby during intermission. In a hurry to follow, Sensible crashed into a woman, nearly knocking her over.

“Baby crashes into star reporter!” Sensible heard the woman say as she and her sister stumbled out the front door. “Wait until the readers of _The Daily Punctilio_ see that!”

“Solitude, stop!” Outside on the front steps of the theater, Sensible grabbed her younger sister’s shoulders. “What are you doing?”

Solitude looked Sensible dead in the eyes. “Abagnale,” she said, which probably meant, “Jailbreak.”

“Oh no,” said Sensible. “No no no no—”

“ _Yes!_ ”

Solitude took off down the sidewalk as fast as her short little legs could carry her. She raced through the theater district, the financial district, and a produce stand that sold very fresh dill. She bit her way through the fence that encircled Count Olaf’s property and launched herself into the yard. She jumped up and down, waving at Sunny in the birdcage.

“Free!” she cried. “Free!”

Sensible shushed her. “Walkie-talkie,” she whispered, pointing at the tall tower. “Hush.”

Solitude looked up at Sunny, dangling helplessly with tape over her mouth many feet up in the air. Sunny pointed down at the hook-handed man, who was guarding the door of the tower.

Sensible looked at him. “Kill?”

Sunny shook her head.

“Tobla?” Solitude said, which probably meant, “But if we can’t bite him to death, what else can we do?”

“Hey!”

With horror, the Baudelaire babies realized that the hook-handed man had seen them. He was now sprinting toward them, brandishing his hooks menacingly.

“Uh-oh,” Solitude said, which probably meant, “Uh-oh.”

Sensible tried to stay calm, although her mind was racing. The man’s hooks were made of metal. If she burned the hooks, his arms would burn too. She clutched the stolen box of matches underneath her coat. But Sunny was right; they couldn’t kill the hook-handed man. He would call his associates on his walkie-talkie before he died, and they would drop Sunny from the tower.

She pulled the matchbox out anyway. She could threaten the hook-handed man, even if she couldn’t hurt him. But when she saw the box, Sensible realized she had reached into the wrong pocket. She wasn’t holding a box of matches. She was holding a deck of cards.

Sensible threw the deck down at the hook-handed man’s boots. He stopped, confused.

“What’s this?”

“Sphinx.”

“You want to play cards with me?”

She nodded.

“What happens if I win?”

“Sunny falls.”

“And if you win?”

“Let her go.”

The hook-handed man sat down on the crabgrass. “I can make that bargain. What game do you want to play?”

“War,” she said.

“Alright.” With his two hooks, the hook-handed man carefully took the deck of the cards out of the box. “Would you like to deal?”

“Sure.” She dealt the cards, intently watching something moving behind the hook-handed man’s head as she shuffled.

It was Solitude, sneaking into the tower. She tottered up the stairs to the very top of the tower, constantly checking over her shoulder to make sure Sensible still had the hook-handed man occupied. Finally, she reached Sunny’s cage.

“Sol!” Sunny shrieked with joy, which probably meant, “I’m so glad you’re here. I tried to bite through the bars for hours, but they’re too strong. I chipped one of my teeth, and the bars didn’t even bend.”

“Dent,” Solitude replied, which probably meant, “Don’t worry about your teeth. We’ll get you out of here.”

“Scared,” Sunny whimpered.

“Frollo,” Solitude said, which probably meant, “Don’t look down.”

Sunny looked down. As she watched, the hook-handed man plucked the last card from the pile and placed it in his own with a satisfied smile.

“I win.”

Sensible gulped. She glanced up at the cage, where Sunny was still trapped. “Two out of three?”

The hook-handed man did not answer. Instead, he walked to the side of the tower and started to untie the rope that kept Sunny suspended in the air.

Sunny screamed. She threw herself against the bars, frantically trying to bite her way out. Solitude jumped onto the cage, trying to tear off the padlock. Sensible grabbed the hook-handed man’s ankle, which had the same eye tattoo as Count Olaf. She pulled at his leg, trying to tip him over.

Then Sunny saw a bright light. For a moment, she thought the cage had fallen and she was seeing heaven. But it wasn’t God who was coming for her that day, trapped in a cage at the top of the tower. It was the headlights of Count Olaf’s gray automobile, in which Lilac, Nick, and Klaus were barreling into the yard. The automobile plowed through the fence and right over the neat pile of cards sitting on the crabgrass. Then it stopped abruptly, inches away from the hook-handed man’s trembling nose.

Lilac rolled down the window.

“Get out of here,” she said. “Or we’ll run you over.”

“We might run you over anyway,” Nick added. “She’s a _terrible_ driver.”

The hook-handed man scrambled backward. He took one look at Lilac’s furious face and ran as fast as he could toward the faraway hills.

“He’ll be back,” said Lilac. “We need to move quickly.”

Lilac, Nick, and Klaus jumped out of the automobile and raced to the top of the tower, Sensible following close behind. Sunny laughed and clapped her hands when they arrived.

“Sunny,” said Nick, reeling in the cage, “where’s the key?”

“Eye,” Sunny said, pointing to something small and cylindrical and horribly familiar on the floor. Nick picked it up. It was a spyglass, a _whole_ spyglass, identical to the one Colin had found in the ashes of their house.

He ran to the tower’s one window and looked out. He could see the hook-handed man trudging back to the tower. He could see the setting sun, streaming in through the dusty windowpane. And far below, he could see the gray ruins of the Baudelaire mansion.

“The scientific principles of the convergence and refraction of light,” he murmured.

It all made sense.

“Nick?” Lilac said. “What’s going on?”

“These things don’t just happen—”

“Sorry, Nick, but I don’t care.” She grabbed the spyglass from him and shook it. Something small and metal rattled inside. “The key!”

“How can we open it?”

“I don’t know.”

Lilac twisted all the parts of the cylinder to the right and left, but nothing opened. Sunny tried to bite the spyglass, but it was too hard for even her teeth. Klaus was about to smash it on the floor when something knocked it out of his hand. A metal hook embedded itself into the wall.

“Looking at your pretty little home?” the hook-handed man said.

He aimed a vicious swipe at Klaus with his remaining hook. Nick jumped on him, knocking him to the ground. The birdcage swung wildly, and the spyglass with the key inside rolled out the open window and disappeared.

“No!” Lilac gasped.

“There’s another way!” Klaus shouted as he dodged a swing of the hook. Nick came to his rescue, knocking the hook out the way. He ripped the man’s second hook from the wall and pointed it at the man’s throat. The hook glinted wickedly in the sun.

“Get in the cage,” Nick said.

Leaving Nick to deal with the hook-handed man, Klaus fumbled in his coat pocket, then pulled out a small white object. He threw it to Solitude, who was still sitting on top of the birdcage, now hanging on for dear life.

“Skeleton key,” said Klaus.

Solitude put the key into the lock and turned it. The cage door swung wide open. Lilac breathed a sigh of relief as she reeled the cage in all the way, returning Solitude and Sunny to solid ground.

“What do we do now?” Sensible asked.

Lilac looked at her siblings. Without Violet there, she realized, she was the oldest Baudelaire in the room. Her braid had come undone during the scuffle, so she did it again. She scanned the room for possible inventing materials. Her eyes landed on the rope outside the window, the hook that Nick was holding, and the theater in the distance.

“We can still get to _The Marvelous Marriage_ on time,” she said, “using a hawser.”

* * *

The bald man with the long nose hurried by Violet, then stopped himself. He looked at Violet in her wedding dress and smirked.

“No funny stuff,” he said to her, waggling a bony finger. “Remember, when you go out there, just do exactly what you’re supposed to do. Count Olaf will be holding his walkie-talkie during the entire act, and if you do even one thing wrong, he’ll be giving Sunny a call up there in the tower.”

“Yes, yes,” Violet said bitterly. She was tired of being threatened in the same way, over and over.

“You’d better do exactly as planned,” the man said again.

“I’m sure they will,” said a voice suddenly. Violet turned to see Mr. Poe, accompanied by a woman who must have been his sister. He smiled at Violet and came over to shake her hand. “Eleanora and I just wanted to tell you to break a leg. That’s a theater term meaning ‘good luck on tonight’s performance.’ ”

“I _know_ what ‘break a leg’ means,” said Violet. "Mr. Poe—"

“I’m glad that you children have adjusted to life with your new father and are participating in family activities,” said Mr. Poe. “I talked to your sister less than an hour ago. She seems very happy and pursuing her mechanical interests. She was saying something about drain plumbing—"

“Mr. Poe,” Violet said insistently, “I have something to tell you. It’s very important.”

“What is it?” Mr. Poe said.

“Yes,” said Count Olaf, “what is it you have to tell Mr. Poe, my bride?”

Count Olaf had appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, and his shiny eyes glared at Violet meaningfully. In one hand, he held a walkie-talkie.

“Just… that I appreciate all you’ve done for me and my siblings, Mr. Poe,” Violet said. “That’s all I wanted to say.”

“Of course, of course,” Mr. Poe said, patting her on the back. “Well, Eleanora and I had better take our seats. Break a leg!”

“Oh, you’ll break a leg soon enough,” Count Olaf muttered to Violet after Mr. Poe and his sister were gone.

“It’s actually a theater term—”

Count Olaf scoffed and pushed Violet toward the stage. The evening sun beating down on the stage of the outdoor theater shone in her eyes, nearly blinding her. She gripped the skipping rock in her left hand. The rock had given her an idea when she had found it in her pocket. She just hoped it would be enough.

Other actors were milling about, finding their places for Act Three, and Justice Strauss was off in a corner, practicing her lines from her law book.

“Look, there’s Violet.” April pointed at the stage, where Violet was standing in a white wedding gown and veil next to Count Olaf, with her back to the audience. She was nearly as tall as he was. If the audience couldn’t see her face, they would have no way of knowing who the actor marrying Count Olaf really was.

“Violet!” April shouted. “You can’t go through with this!”

Violet turned around and saw the twins. “I have to,” she mouthed.

“There’s always something,” Colin said.

She shook her head fiercely. “Not this time. Sunny’s life depends on this plan working. Don’t you two dare try anything.”

“But—”

“Go.”

“Violet, what pl—”

“Go!” she shouted.

Colin had meant to say, “Violet, what plan are you talking about?” But he had been cut off. It was the right question, and he was right to have tried to ask it. Was Violet referring to Count Olaf’s plan to marry her, or something else, some secret she had thought of herself? He took a look around the stage, wondering if anyone there could help. The bald man with the long nose took the twins’ hands and led them to one side.

“We’ll stand here for the duration,” he said. “That means the whole time.”

“We _know_ what the word ‘duration’ means,” Colin said crossly.

“And ‘the duration,’ ” April added, “doesn’t mean anything.”

“No nonsense,” the bald man said.

April and Colin miserably watched the curtain rise, and Act Three of _The Marvelous Marriage_ began.


	8. "I'm Not Your Countess"

Five minutes into Act Three, April leaned toward Colin. “This is a dreadful play,” she whispered.

“Count Olaf,” Colin replied, “is a dreadful person.”

 _The Marvelous Marriage_ was indeed a dreadful play. Various actors and actresses performed grammatically incorrect dialogue as Colin tried to make eye contact with them and see if they would help. Count Olaf had a great number of very long speeches, which he performed with elaborate gestures and facial expressions. No one seemed to notice that he held a walkie-talkie the entire time. Colin sensed the audience losing interest and moving around in their seats.

“The readers of _The Daily Punctilio_ ,” Geraldine Julienne remarked from her front-row seat, loud enough to be heard onstage, “won’t want to see _that_.”

Colin shifted from foot to foot, and the spyglass fell out of his pocket and rolled onto the stage. Quickly, April bent down and retrieved it before the bald man noticed. Suddenly she froze, still halfway bent over.

“April?” asked Colin. “Are you alright?”

“This is a spyglass,” she said. “And every spyglass has a lens.”

She turned to him and handed him the broken spyglass. “Do you remember what Sensible said when we showed this to her?”

“She said ‘fire,’ ” Colin murmured. He was starting to realize what April was thinking.

“I thought she wanted to set the spyglass on fire,” April said, “because she wants to set everything on fire. But what she really meant was that the lens of the spyglass can be used to _start_ a fire.”

Colin nodded. “The scientific principles of the convergence and refraction of light.”

April pointed toward the altar. “If we burn the marriage document while Justice Strauss is giving her speech, Violet won’t be able to sign it.”

“A legal marriage in this city requires the signing of an explanatory document in the bride’s own hand,” said Colin. “Without the document, the marriage will be invalid!”

He removed the lid of the spyglass, exposing the glass lens. As Justice Strauss began to speak, he and April tried to position it at the correct angle to catch the last few rays of the quickly vanishing sun. In a few minutes, the sun would go down, and the Baudelaires would have lost their last chance.

“Do you,” Justice Strauss said to Count Olaf, “take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife?”

“I do,” Count Olaf said, smiling, as he signed the document.

“Do you,” Justice Strauss said, turning to Violet, “take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband?”

Violet hesitated. Count Olaf’s hand moved to where he had hidden his walkie-talkie.

“I do,” Violet finally said. Colin clenched his fists.

“Hurry up, April!” he hissed.

“I’m hurryupping!” she said, maneuvering the spyglass this way and that.

“Don’t move an inch,” the bald man, who had not yet noticed what April was doing, muttered to Colin. He stood still as he watched Violet take a long quill pen from Count Olaf. Violet’s eyes were wide as she looked down at the document, and her face was pale, and her left hand was trembling as she signed her name.

“It’s not too late,” April whispered, still fiddling with the spyglass. “Even if Violet has already signed, we can still destroy the evidence.”

“Stop the play!”

Lilac burst into the theater, five of her siblings behind her. But it was too late. The document was signed, and Count Olaf held it up for everyone to see.

“And now, ladies and gentlemen,” Count Olaf said, stepping forward to address the audience, “I have an announcement. There is no reason to continue tonight’s performance, for its purpose has been served. This has not been a scene of fiction. My marriage to Violet Baudelaire is perfectly legal, and now I am in control of her entire fortune.”

There were gasps from the audience, and some of the actors looked at one another in shock. Not everyone, apparently, had known about Olaf’s plan.

“That can’t be!” Justice Strauss cried.

“The marriage laws in this community are quite simple,” Count Olaf said. “The bride and groom must say ‘I do’ in the presence of a judge like yourself and sign an explanatory document. And all of you are witnesses.”

“But Violet is only a child!” Mr. Poe said. “She’s not old enough to marry.”

“She is if her legal guardian agrees,” Count Olaf said, “and in addition to being her husband, I am her legal guardian.”

“But that piece of paper is not an official document!” Justice Strauss said. “That’s just a stage prop!”

Count Olaf gave the paper to Justice Strauss. “I think if you look at it closely, you will see it is an official document from City Hall.”

Justice Strauss took the document in her hand and read it quickly. Then, closing her eyes, she sighed deeply and furrowed her brow, thinking hard.

“You’re right,” she said finally. “This marriage, unfortunately, is completely legal. Violet said ‘I do’ and signed her name here on this paper. Count Olaf, you are Violet’s husband, and therefore in complete control of her estate.”

“That can’t be!” said Mr. Poe. He ran up the stairs to the stage and took the document from Justice Strauss. “This is dreadful nonsense.”

“This dreadful nonsense is the law,” Count Olaf said.

Justice Strauss’s eyes were filling up with tears. “I can’t believe how easily I was tricked,” she said. “I would never do anything to harm you children. Never.”

“You were easily tricked,” Count Olaf said, grinning, as the judge began to cry. “It was child’s play, winning this fortune. Now, if all of you will excuse me, my bride and I need to go home for our wedding night.”

He held out his hand. Violet didn’t take it. Olaf slipped the gold ring onto her finger anyway.

“This is absolutely horrendous,” said Mr. Poe. “This is completely monstrous. This is financially dreadful.”

“I’m afraid, however,” Count Olaf said, “that it is legally binding. Tomorrow, Mr. Poe, I shall come down to the bank and withdraw the complete Baudelaire fortune.”

Mr. Poe opened his mouth as if to say something, but began to cough instead. For several seconds he coughed into a handkerchief while everyone waited for him to speak. While Mr. Poe coughed, April gasped as the sunlight hit the spyglass at exactly the right angle.

“Colin! Colin, I got it!”

She aimed the spyglass at the marriage document.

“I won’t allow it,” Mr. Poe finally gasped, wiping his mouth. “I absolutely will not allow it.”

“I’m afraid you have to,” Justice Strauss said through her tears. “This marriage is legally binding.”

“Begging your pardon,” Violet said quietly, “but I think you may be wrong.”

“What did you say, Countess?” Olaf said.

“I’m not your countess,” Violet said testily. “At least, I don’t _think_ I am.”

“April, wait.” Colin put his hand over the lens of the spyglass, then jerked it back. The lens was too hot to touch.

“What are you doing?” She pulled the spyglass away. The beam of light landed on Violet’s white wedding dress.

“Stop!” he said. “You’re going to burn Violet!”

“I did not sign the document in my own hand, as the law states,” Violet was saying.

“What do you mean?” said Count Olaf. “We all saw you!”

“I’m afraid your husband is right, dear,” Justice Strauss said sadly. “There’s no use denying it. There are too many witnesses.”

“Like most people,” Violet said, “I am right-handed. But I signed the document with my left hand.”

“What?” Count Olaf cried. He snatched the paper from Justice Strauss and looked down at it. His eyes were shining very bright. “You’re a liar!” he hissed at Violet.

“No, she’s not,” said Mr. Poe. “I remember, because I watched her use her left hand as she signed her name.”

“It’s impossible to prove,” Count Olaf said.

“If you like,” Violet said, “I would be happy to sign my name again on a separate sheet of paper, with my right hand and then with my left. You’ll see that my left-hand signature is a great deal messier than my right-hand one, despite my efforts to become ambidextrous.”

“A small detail, like which hand you used to sign,” Count Olaf said, “doesn’t matter in the least. “

“If you don’t mind, sir,” Mr. Poe said, “I’d like Justice Strauss to make that decision.”

Everyone looked at Justice Strauss, who was wiping away the last of her tears. “Let me see,” she said quietly, and closed her eyes again. She sighed deeply, and the Baudelaire orphans held their breath as Justice Strauss furrowed her brow, thinking hard on the situation.

“If Violet is indeed right-handed,” she said finally, “and she signed the document with her left hand, then it follows that the signature does not fulfill the requirements of the city’s nuptial laws. The law clearly states the document must be signed in the bride’s own hand. Therefore, we can conclude that this marriage is invalid. Violet, you are _not_ a countess, and Count Olaf, you are _not_ in control of the Baudelaire fortune.”

“April, we’re safe!” said Colin. “We don’t need to burn the document after all!”

She jerked the spyglass downward, which was a mistake. The beam of light focused on the stage right in front of the twins’ feet, and a small flame bloomed on the wooden floor.

Count Olaf pointed a finger at Violet. “You may not be my wife,” he said, “but you are still my daughter, and—”

“Do you honestly think,” Mr. Poe said in an exasperated voice, “that I will allow you to continue to care for these three children, after the treachery I have seen here tonight?”

“The orphans are mine,” Count Olaf insisted, “and with me they shall stay. There is nothing illegal about trying to marry someone.”

“But there _is_ something illegal about dangling an infant out of a tower window,” Lilac said indignantly. “You held Sunny in a cage to force Violet to marry you.”

“You, Count Olaf, will go to jail,” said Justice Strauss, “and the three children will live with me.”

Mr. Poe took Count Olaf’s arm and announced, “I hereby arrest you in the name of the law.”

“Can he do that?” Nick whispered to Lilac. “He’s not a police officer.”

“Oh, Justice Strauss!” Klaus said. “Did you really mean what you said? Can we really live with you?”

“Of course I mean it,” Justice Strauss said. “I’m very fond of you children, and I feel responsible for your welfare.”

Colin tried in vain to stamp out the fire with the boot of his costume. “Put it out, put it out, _put it out!_ ”

It was of no use. The flames leaped higher and higher, and the smell of smoke filled the air. Unable to bear the rising heat, circuit boards and switches exploded. Suddenly, the lights went off. Pandemonium ensued as everyone ran this way and that, shouting at one another. Actors tripped over members of the audience. Members of the audience tripped over theatrical props. Lilac grabbed Sunny and held her up as high as she could, so she wouldn’t get hurt.

Violet made her way across the stage toward her siblings, stepping carefully around pieces of furniture and startled actors. She felt a hand on her shoulder. A figure leaned in to whisper into her ear.

“I’ll get my hands on your fortune if it’s the last thing I do,” Count Olaf hissed. “And when I have it, I’ll kill you and your siblings with my own two hands.”

Violet gave a little cry of terror. Then someone doused the fire with water, sending a last hiss of smoke like ghosts into the air. The lights flicked back on. Mr. Poe’s secretary was standing onstage next to the dark-haired man. She was holding a long rubber hose. But Count Olaf was gone.

“Jacquelyn Scieszka,” the woman introduced herself. “I was kidnapped by Count Olaf’s associates and tied to a tree before I could tell Mr. Poe that the Baudelaires’ uncle, Dr. Montgomery, was designated by the parents as their legal guardian and has been waiting to hear from them. This is my associate Gustav Sebald,” she said, gesturing to the man next to her.

“You have to capture Count Olaf!” said Nick. “You have to go after him!”

“You let the authorities worry about that,” said Justice Strauss. “You children, come home with me.”

Mr. Poe coughed. “Wait a minute,” he said, looking down at the floor. “I’m sorry to tell you this, children, but I cannot allow you to be raised by someone who is not a relative.”

“What?” Sensible cried.

“After all Justice Strauss has done for us?” April said.

“We never would have figured out Count Olaf’s plan without her and her library,” Klaus said. “Without Justice Strauss, we would have lost our lives.”

“That may be so,” Mr. Poe said, “and I thank Justice Strauss for her generosity, but your parents’ will is very specific.”

“He’s right,” said Jacquelyn. “There is a vigorously fixed destination your parents had in mind for you, and it is not with Count Olaf or Justice Strauss.”

The children looked at Justice Strauss, who sighed heavily and hugged each of the Baudelaire orphans in turn.

“Goodbye, children,” she said sadly. “I’ll miss you very much.”

“We’ll miss you too,” Violet said.

Jacquelyn turned to the Baudelaire children. “Did you see what started the fire?”

Rather guiltily, Colin handed over the spyglass. Jacquelyn ran her finger over the eye design on the lid, then returned it to Colin.

“Keep this,” she said to him. “I have a feeling it’ll come in handy.”

“It’s broken,” said Colin.

“Just because something is missing a piece,” she said, “doesn’t mean that it’s broken.”

Jacquelyn took Violet’s wrist and inspected the ring on her finger closely.

“How did you get this ring?”

“It was our mother’s,” April said. “I found it in our home, after the fire.”

“Let me see that.” Gustav looked at the ring. “This is a very important ring. Your family got it from Jacquelyn’s family. It belonged to your mother, and now it belongs to you. This piece of jewelry is very precious. It just may be the reason you are alive,” he said. “Take good care of the ring.”

April stared at him. He winked. "I invented that one."

“The one I own is a copy,” said Jacquelyn, “meant to throw off anyone who might be looking for the real thing. Now, I’m afraid we have to leave. Gustav’s sister is waiting for us in the city. She’s investigating a case involving arson, sapphires, and a dead triplet.”

She and Gustav left without another word, leaving April with hundreds of questions.

“Come along, Lilac,” Mr. Poe said.

“I’m April,” she said. She took his hand and left the theater.

The Baudelaire children followed Mr. Poe to his automobile and piled into the backseat. They rode in silence for a while down the darkened streets, away from the comforting library of Justice Strauss and even further from the ashy remains of the Baudelaire mansion.

Finally, Violet spoke up.

“Thank you, Lilac,” she said. “If you hadn’t lifted my spirits a couple nights ago, I would never have had the courage to make that grappling hook.”

“It was very brave of you to volunteer,” said April. “If you hadn’t, Count Olaf would have tried to marry me or Lilac instead.”

“If Nick hadn’t known about the track switcher, we would have been crushed by a train,” said Klaus.

“And if Klaus hadn’t found the skeleton key, we wouldn’t have been able to unlock Sunny’s cage,” said Lilac.

“If Sol hadn’t dragged me back to Count Olaf’s house,” said Sensible, “I wouldn’t have thought to break Sunny out of the birdcage.”

“April and Colin tried to use the spyglass to save us,” Nick said, “even though using it caused quite a mess.”

“Rummy,” Solitude said, which probably meant, “If Sensible hadn’t distracted the hook-handed man with a game of cards, Sunny would never have been rescued.”

The Baudelaires all looked at Sunny, thankful that she was alive and safe.

“Cake!” she said.

The children lapsed into silence again.

“I noticed something in Count Olaf’s tower room,” Nick said. “I think… I think I know how our house burned down.”

Lilac shushed him. “Let’s not worry about that for now,” she said. “We’ll go live with Dr. Montgomery, and we’ll never have to worry about Count Olaf stealing our fortune ever again. We’ll be safe.”

“Do you think that’s possible?”

“Of course,” Lilac said, though she didn’t really believe it. “Our lives will be safe. Safe and quiet.”

One by one, in the backseat of Mr. Poe’s automobile, the nine Baudelaire siblings fell asleep.


	9. "No Harm Will Come To You Here"

“It’s a brand-new episode of your lives, Baudelaires,” Mr. Poe said. “In a few minutes you’ll be meeting your new guardian, Dr. Montgomery. He is your closest living relative and apparently should have been your guardian all along, according to a section of your deceased parents’ will that appears to have been written in invisible ink.”

“How can it appear if it’s invisible?” Klaus asked.

“Oh, lemon juice and some heat will do the trick.”

Mr. Poe turned onto a stretch of road called Lousy Lane. It ran through a sickly gray orchard of bitter apples, and it encircled a horseradish factory, so the entire area smelled extremely pungent.

Sunny began to cry when she smelled the sharp scent of horseradish. Lilac, who was holding Sunny in her lap, shushed her, but the baby only cried harder.

“I’m sorry if you’re uncomfortable,” Mr. Poe said, coughing into a white handkerchief, “but this new car of mine doesn’t fit too many people.”

“Not the car’s fault,” said Sensible. “Horseradish.”

“Horseradish?” Colin repeated, confused.

“Sunny doesn’t like it.”

“I’m sorry, Sunny,” said Lilac. “Hopefully you’ll grow used to it.”

“At least we’re not allergic,” said Sensible.

“Who knows?” said Nick. “Maybe our next guardian will live next to a peppermint factory.”

“Nick!” said Lilac. “There will be _no_ next guardian. Didn’t you hear Mr. Poe? Dr. Montgomery was supposed to be our guardian all along, and we will live with him until we grow up.”

“Great. Six years of horseradish.”

“After living so long in the city,” Mr. Poe said, “I think you will find the countryside to be a pleasant change. I think you’ll like Dr. Montgomery, too. He has traveled a great deal, so he has plenty of stories to tell. I’ve heard his house is filled with things he’s brought from all the places he’s been.”

Sunny paused in her crying. “Bax!” she shrieked, which probably meant, “I’m nervous about meeting a new relative.”

“How exactly is Dr. Montgomery related to us?” Klaus asked.

“Dr. Montgomery is—let me see—your late father’s cousin’s wife’s brother. I think that’s right. He’s a scientist of some sort and receives a great deal of money from the government.”

“Good,” Colin said. “Then he’ll have no interest in our fortune.”

“What should we call him?” April asked.

“You should call him Dr. Montgomery,” Mr. Poe replied, “unless he tells you to call him Montgomery. Both his first and last names are Montgomery, so it doesn't really make much difference.”

“His name is Montgomery Montgomery?” Nick said, smiling.

“Yes, yes. And I’m sure he’s very sensitive about that, so don’t ridicule him,” Mr. Poe said, coughing again into his handkerchief. “ ‘Ridicule’ means ‘tease.’ ”

Nick sighed. “I _know_ what ‘ridicule’ means.”

“Oh, here’s the driveway,” said Mr. Poe. “We’ve arrived.”

Mr. Poe pulled the car up a steep gravel driveway and toward an enormous stone house. The children gaped as they walked down the driveway through the front garden, which was dotted with long, thin shrubs that had been trimmed to look like snakes.

“Eerie,” Sensible said.

“Do you know what sort of scientist Dr. Montgomery is?” Lilac asked, looking around the strange garden. She was thinking Dr. Montgomery might have a laboratory that would be of use to her.

“L., his garden is filled with hedges shaped like snakes,” Violet said. “What kind of scientist do you _think_ he is?”

“Snake,” Solitude said thoughtfully.

“Somebody please make sure Sunny doesn’t bite Dr. Montgomery,” said Mr. Poe. “That wouldn’t be a good first impression.”

Mr. Poe stepped up to the door and rang the doorbell six times. After a moment’s pause, they could hear approaching footsteps, and the Baudelaire orphans all looked at one another with trepidation.

The door creaked open slowly, and the children held their breath as they peered into the dark entryway.

“Hello hello hello!” a loud voice boomed out, and from behind the door stepped a short, chubby man with a round red face who was carrying a platter of something that smelled delicious. “I am your Uncle Monty, and this is really perfect timing—I just finished making a coconut cream cake! My assistant Gustav will—oh, I just forgot. Gustav, my top assistant, left an unexpected letter of resignation for me just yesterday.”

“We met a man named Gustav yesterday,” Colin said. “I think he left with Mr. Poe’s secretary.”

“Oh, no matter,” said Dr. Montgomery. “Come inside! I’ll prepare your plates myself.”

“That would be very nice,” said Lilac. “Thank you, Dr. Montgomery.”

Dr. Montgomery wagged a finger at Lilac as he began cutting the cake into eleven thick slices. “None of that ‘Dr. Montgomery’ stuff,” he said. “That's way too stuffy for me. Call me Uncle Monty. I don’t like fancy titles unless they get me a discount at the movies. Do you like going to the movies?”

“Very much,” April said. “But our parents didn’t take us very often.”

“Well, we are going to go a lot,” Uncle Monty said. “What is your favorite movie, April?”

“ _Dawn Patrol_ ,” she said. “The 1938 version.”

He winked. “It was your father’s favorite too.” He frowned when he saw Sunny’s untouched coconut cream cake. “Doesn’t Sunny like coconut?”

“To tell you the truth,” Violet said, “Sunny doesn’t really like anything soft to eat. She prefers very hard food.”

“How unusual for a baby,” Uncle Monty said, “but not at all unusual for many snakes. The Barbary Chewer, for example, is a snake that must have something in its mouth at all times, otherwise it begins to eat its own mouth. Very difficult to keep in captivity. Would Sunny perhaps like a raw carrot? That's plenty hard.”

“Meen!” Sunny said, which probably meant, “A raw carrot would be perfect.”

“Uncle Monty, are you a herpetologist?” Violet asked.

“What an inquisitive mind,” Uncle Monty said. “Yes, Violet, I am a herpetologist.”

“What does that mean?” Klaus asked.

“It’s the study of something,” Colin answered. “Whenever a word has ‘ology,' it’s the study of something.”

“Snake!” said Solitude.

“Precisely!” Uncle Monty cried. “Snakes, snakes, snakes! That's what I study. I love snakes, all kinds, and I circle the globe looking for different kinds to study here in my laboratory. Isn't that interesting?”

“That _is_ interesting,” Violet said.

“But isn't it dangerous?" Lilac said.

“Not if you know the facts,” Uncle Monty said. “Mr. Poe, would you like a raw carrot as well? You’ve scarcely touched your cake.”

Mr. Poe turned red and coughed into his handkerchief for quite some time before replying. “No thank you, Dr. Montgomery.”

“If you like, you may call me Uncle Monty as well, Mr. Poe.”

“Thank you, Uncle Monty,” Mr. Poe said stiffly. “Now, _I_ have a question, if you don’t mind. You mentioned that you circle the globe. Is there someone who will come and take care of the children while you are out collecting specimens?”

We’re old enough to stay by ourselves,” Violet said quickly.

“I wouldn’t hear of it,” Uncle Monty said. “You three must come with me. In ten days we leave for Peru, and I want you children right there in the jungle with me. I have hired a man named Stephano to take Gustav’s place, but he won't arrive for a week or so, and I am way behind on preparations for the expedition.”

“Lilac, April, and I are interested in mechanics,” said Violet, “and the boys find guidebooks and geography fascinating. We would be happy to help you prepare for your expedition.”

“ _Our_ expedition,” Uncle Monty corrected. “I’m glad you have such enthusiasm. It will make it easier to do without Gustav. It was very strange, his leaving like that. I was unlucky to lose him.”

Uncle Monty's face clouded over, and Violet had a feeling that Gustav had been someone very close to him.

“Now, children,” Mr. Poe said, “I should be getting back to the bank soon. If you need anything, remember you can always reach me—”

“They won’t need anything from you, Mr. Poe,” said Uncle Monty. “They’re finally in my care, and I will dedicate myself to their safety, comfort, and happiness as enthusiastically as I have dedicated myself to this coconut cream cake.”

Mr. Poe gave the orphans an awkward little wave with his handkerchief, got into his small car, and drove back down the steep gravel driveway onto Lousy Lane.

“Our parents’ fortune can’t be used until Violet comes of age,” Colin said immediately after the front door closed.

“Colin, don’t be rude,” said Lilac.

“I don’t give a fig about the Baudelaire fortune, what with my salary from the Herpetological Society,” Uncle Monty said. “But as a scientist, I do admire your skepticism, Colin. It’s understandable after what you children have been through.”

“What do you mean?” Lilac asked.

“Lilac, do you know snakes are more afraid of you than you are of them?”

She shook her head.

“Few people do,” Uncle Monty continued. “When threatened, a snake will retreat to a place that is quiet, safe, remote. A sanctuary where it can feel out of danger. That’s why we’re going to Peru.”

He turned around to clean up the plates of cake, and Colin glimpsed something shiny and cylindrical in the pocket of his official Herpetological Society-issued travel coat.

“Wait,” he said. “That spyglass. I saw one just like that in our father’s—”

“Plenty of time for chit-chat later,” Uncle Monty interrupted. He pushed the spyglass further into his pocket. “Right now, what I need are three inventors, three researchers, a chef, a biter, and a budding herpetologist. Know any?”

* * *

“Your rooms will be up there,” Uncle Monty said, gesturing up the stairs. “You can each choose whatever room you like and move the furniture around to suit your taste.”

“Do we really each get our own room?” April asked.

“Of course,” Uncle Monty replied. “You don’t think I’d coop you all up in one room when I have this enormous house, do you? What sort of person would do that?”

“Count Olaf did.”

“Oh, that's right. Mr. Poe told me,” Uncle Monty said. “Count Olaf sounds like an awful person. I hope he is torn apart by wild animals someday. Wouldn't that be satisfying?”

“It certainly would,” Nick said, grinning. “Especially if that animal is _Anthopleura sola_.”

“Yes, it is unfortunate that my field of study is snakes, not sea creatures,” said Uncle Monty. “Oh, well. Here we are: the Reptile Room.”

Uncle Monty had reached a very tall wooden door covered with a great deal of complicated-looking locks and machinery, and with a large doorknob right in the middle of it.

“Now, Baudelaires, I am about to show you one of the most important scientific collections in the history of the world. Spies and rivals in the world of herpetology would eat nine garter snakes to get a glimpse of the wonders inside this room.”

He gestured to the door. “This door has been installed with a top-of-the-line security system. You can’t get inside unless you have nineteen keys, three combinations, two fingerprints, and one optical scan. Or, as I share with my most trusted associates, by turning this doorknob right here.”

The doorknob was so high up that he had to stand on his tiptoes to open it. When it swung open on its creaky hinges, the Baudelaire orphans all gasped in astonishment and delight at the room they saw.

The Reptile Room was made entirely out of glass, with bright, clear glass walls and a high glass ceiling that rose up to a point like the inside of a cathedral. Nick went straight to the glass walls of the room, staring out at a maze of shrubs that made up Uncle Monty’s backyard.

“Wow,” he breathed. “It’s like being inside and outside at the same time.”

Uncle Monty beckoned Solitude and Sunny over to a sun-soaked corner of the room.

“Here is the lizard wing,” he said, “and here is a winged lizard.”

The lizard, a small green creature with yellow stripes on its belly, crawled shyly onto Uncle Monty’s forearm.

“Now, see his yellow-striped belly, a sign of camouflage and cowardice.”

“Poe,” Sunny said thoughtfully.

“Dodo?” Solitude asked, which probably meant, “Can it really fly?”

Uncle Monty smiled. “He can fly on cue. Fly!”

The lizard took off, spiraling into the air toward the high glass ceiling. Solitude gasped and clapped her hands.

“Uncle Monty?” Across the room, April and Colin were inspecting a large tortoise wearing a pair of bright blue headphones. “What kind of animal is this?”

“This,” said Uncle Monty, “is the dissonant tortoise, soothed only by the music of Alexander Scriabin or early Sonic Youth. Here, listen in.”

He took the headphones off the tortoise and lifted them up to April’s ear. She giggled.

Klaus walked up and down the rows and rows of bookshelves, touching each book gently with his finger. He examined the books as carefully as Solitude had the reptile cages, and he realized immediately that most of the books were about snakes and other reptiles, from _An Introduction to Large Lizards_ to _The Care and Feeding of the Mamba du Mal_.

“This is an amazing place,” he said.

“Thank you,” Uncle Monty said. “It’s taken me a lifetime to put together.”

“And are we really allowed to come inside here?”

“ _Allowed?_ ” Uncle Monty repeated. “Of course not! You are _implored_ to come inside here, my boy. Starting first thing tomorrow morning, all of us must be here every day in preparation for the expedition to Peru. I’ll clear off one of those tables for Violet, Lilac, and April to work on the traps. Nick can test them. Colin and Klaus, I expect you to read all of the books about Peru that I have, and make careful notes. Sensible and Solitude can help me feed the snakes, and Sunny can sit on the floor and bite rope into small pieces. We’ll work all day until suppertime, and after supper we’ll go to the movies. Are there any objections?”

The Baudelaire children looked at one another and grinned.

“No, no, no!” Solitude cried out, which probably meant, “My herpetological skills are at your service!”

“Good, good, good,” Uncle Monty said, smiling. “Now, let’s go figure out whose room is whose.”

“Uncle Monty?” Sensible tugged on his sleeve. “One question.”

“What’s that?” he asked.

Sensible pointed to a large cage with a cloth on top of it. Uncle Monty looked at the cage, and his face lit up. “That, my dears, is a new snake which I brought over from my last journey. Gustav and myself are the only people to have seen it. Next month I will present it to the Herpetological Society as a new discovery, but in the meantime, I’ll allow you to look at it. Gather ‘round.”

The Baudelaire orphans followed Uncle Monty to the cloth-covered cage, and with a flourish, he swooped the cloth off the cage. Inside was a large black snake, looking right at the orphans with its bright green eyes. Solitude clapped her hands with glee.

“Snake!” she squealed.

“Because I discovered it,” Uncle Monty said, “I got to name it.”

“What is it called?” Lilac asked.

“The Incredibly Deadly Viper,” Uncle Monty replied. 

Suddenly, the snake unlatched the door of its cage with one flick of its tail and slithered onto the table, headed straight for the children. Quicker than lighting, it opened its mouth and bit Sunny on the chin.

Lilac gasped. “Sunny!”

“Uncle Monty, what can we do?” Klaus said in despair.

Violet was about to accept the fact that her youngest sister would soon be dead when Sunny, moving as suddenly as the snake, opened her mouth and bit the Incredibly Deadly Viper right on its tiny, scaled nose. The snake let go of her chin, leaving barely a mark. It coiled around Sunny playfully. She gave it a big hug.

“Ink!” said Sunny.

Uncle Monty laughed so hard that tears came to his eyes and he had to wipe his red face with a handkerchief. “Oh, I’m sorry, my dears. You must be very frightened. But the Incredibly Deadly Viper is one of the _least_ dangerous and most friendly creatures in the animal kingdom. Sunny has nothing to worry about, and neither do you.”

“But then why is it called the Incredibly Deadly Viper?” Colin asked.

Uncle Monty laughed again. “It's a misnomer,” he said. “Because I discovered it, I got to name it, remember? Don't tell anyone about the Incredibly Deadly Viper, because I'm going to present it to the Herpetological Society and give them a good scare before explaining that the snake is completely harmless! Lord knows they’ve teased me many times because of my name. ‘Hello hello, Montgomery Montgomery,’ they say. ‘How are you how are you, Montgomery Montgomery?’ But at this year's conference, I'm going to get back at them with this prank.”

He stood up. “ ‘Colleagues,’ I’ll say, ‘I would like to introduce to you a new species, the Incredibly Deadly Viper, which I found in the southwest forest of—my God! It’s escaped!’ And then, when all my fellow herpetologists have jumped up on chairs and tables and are shrieking in fear, I’ll tell them that the snake wouldn’t hurt a fly! Won't that be hysterical?”

The Baudelaire children looked at each other and began laughing, half in relief that Sunny was unharmed and half with amusement, because they thought Uncle Monty’s prank was a good one.

“Are there any snakes in this room that are dangerous?” Violet asked.

“Of course,” Uncle Monty said. “You can't study snakes for forty years without encountering some dangerous ones. I have a whole cabinet of venom samples from every poisonous snake known to people, so I can study the ways in which these dangerous snakes work. There is a snake in this room whose venom is so deadly that your heart would stop before you even knew he’d bitten you. There is a snake who can open her mouth so wide she could swallow all of us, together, in one gulp.”

“Kit,” said Solitude, which probably meant, “I’ve heard of a snake who has learned to drive a car so recklessly that it would run you over in the street and never stop to apologize.”

“I have a pair of those snakes as well,” Uncle Monty said. “But all of these snakes are in cages with much sturdier locks, and all of them can be handled safely when one has studied them enough. I know that a few dangerous reptiles can make you skeptical of the entire species. But if you give them a chance, and you get to know them well enough to tell the dangerous from the good, I promise you, no harm will come to you here in the Reptile Room.”

The nine Baudelaires looked at each other, then looked around the magnificent Reptile Room, and they knew that what Uncle Monty had said was true.


	10. "Life Is A Conundrum Of Esoterica"

Uncle Monty, carrying Sunny in his arms, walked into the Reptile Room to check on the children. The older Baudelaires were already busy reading and inventing. Violet was sitting in a corner, unwinding a long strip of fabric from around her shoulder. Uncle Monty noticed the fabric had a dark stain on it.

“Violet, are you alright?”

She showed him her right shoulder, which was dark with dried blood and oozing slightly with something unpleasant.

“I injured it with a grappling hook I invented to rescue Sunny,” she told him. “And then Count Olaf squeezed my shoulder and injured it more. It’s not healing properly.”

“That’s a bad wound,” Uncle Monty said. “We need to treat it before it becomes infected.”

He led Violet to the northern wall of the Reptile Room, where there was a stove and a sink. Violet cleaned her shoulder at the sink, and Uncle Monty found antiseptic and a roll of gauze in one of the cabinets. He wound the gauze expertly around her shoulder.

“Did you say Count Olaf did this to you?”

“Sort of.”

“Now, there’s no need to worry about that man anymore,” he said. “But in the unlikely case that you do see him again, I give you my full permission to stab him with one of my kitchen knives.”

“Really?”

“Go for one of his eyes, or his throat.” He pointed at his own neck. “The jugular vein, right here. Your shoulder should be fine,” he added. “But I’d practice using your left arm anyway, at least while the wound heals. You don’t want to aggravate the injury. And there’s no disadvantage to being equally strong on both sides.”

He left to look over a book of maps of the Mortmain Mountains.

“Colin, I need your help.”

Klaus was dragging, with some difficulty, a large reading lamp, almost as large as he was, across the floor of the Reptile Room. Colin looked up from a book entitled _The Wild Snakes of Peru_ and his cup of tea.

“What for?” he asked Klaus.

“Can you carry this lamp up the stairs for me? I’m going to put it in my bedroom.”

“Did Uncle Monty give you permission to do that?”

“One hundred percent!” Uncle Monty called out from across the room.

“Alright, then.” Colin stood up. “But we’ll have to do it together.”

“Colin!” Lilac frowned when he put down his cup of tea. “Use a coaster, or you’ll leave—”

“—an unsightly ring on the table,” Colin finished. “I know, I know. Mother and Father never let us forget.”

“And for good reason,” said Uncle Monty, taking Colin’s cup from him and carefully placing it on top of one of the maps. “Now, I have some hot chocolate on the stove. I’ll be back in a jiffy.”

He got up and left the Reptile Room. Colin and Klaus followed him, carrying the lamp between them.

“Woe is me,” a sad-looking crocodile drawled from its cage. April reached through the bars of its cage to stroke its scales.

“Don’t be sad,” she said. “Uncle Monty will be back soon.”

“It can’t understand you,” said Violet. “Uncle Monty said that the broken-hearted crocodile’s mating call just happens to sound like depressed human speech.”

“I know,” said April. “I just like talking to it.”

“I wish he’d go back outside,” said Nick. “He’s annoying.”

“Woe is me,” the crocodile said again.

“Woe is you?” Nick repeated. “We’re the ones whose parents perished in a fire, and now we’re being passed around like hot potatoes.”

“Carrot,” Sensible said.

“Nick,” Violet said sharply, “ _it can’t understand you._ ”

“I know that!” He hit the table with his fist. Colin’s cup of tea toppled off the map. It shattered and spilled all over the floor, hot and steaming. Lilac jumped up and rushed to get paper towels. Sunny crawled to the stain spreading across the floor and started to lick it.

“What’s going on here?” Colin and Klaus had returned from Klaus’s room. They stood in the doorway, taking in the scene.

“What’s going on here,” Violet said, “is that Nick isn’t being sensible.”

“Of course he’s not Sensible,” Klaus said. “He’s Nick.”

She glared at him. “That joke stopped being funny three years ago.”

April picked up Sunny. “Nick, I know how you feel. We’re always going to miss our parents. But Uncle Monty has been a good guardian so far, and it seems like our parents really wanted us here.”

“But that’s just it,” said Nick. “Our parents never mentioned Uncle Monty. Why did we never visit him?”

“That’s been bothering me too,” said Colin. He started to carefully pick up the shattered pieces of his cup. “I thought we knew all our parents’ friends. I thought we knew everything about them.”

“I’m sure they had a good reason for not telling us about Uncle Monty,” April said, fidgeting nervously with the ring on her finger.

“Maybe it was the same reason they sent us to Briny Beach that day,” Colin said. “Maybe it was the same reason we found this in Father’s desk.”

He pulled out the broken spyglass and set it on the table.

“Count Olaf had one exactly like it. And so does Uncle Monty.”

As if on cue, Uncle Monty appeared in the doorway, holding a platter with ten mugs of hot chocolate. “Baudelaire _bambinis_ , have you chosen your rooms yet?”

“Klaus has picked his room,” Colin said. “But the rest of us haven’t yet.”

“Then put down what you’re doing and follow me upstairs. We’ll—” Uncle Monty stopped when he saw Lilac cleaning up the spilled tea. “What happened here?”

“I knocked the cup over,” said Nick. “It was an accident.”

“I understand,” said Uncle Monty. “Accidents happen all the time in my field of work. But I think if this is your fault, _you_ should be cleaning up the spill, not your sister.”

Lilac got up quickly. “It’s really not a problem—”

“I won’t have any of that. Nick, clean up the spill. And apologize to Lilac.”

“Sorry,” Nick mumbled. He took a paper towel from the roll.

Uncle Monty smiled warmly. “See? That wasn’t so hard, was it? Now, choose your rooms quickly, and we’ll have time to go see our first movie. Won’t that be exciting?”

“What movie are we seeing?” Nick asked, his curiosity overcoming his annoyance.

“Well,” said Uncle Monty, “we won’t know until we get there.”

“I’ve never heard of a movie theater that doesn’t tell you what movie is playing.”

“Nick Baudelaire, I have a feeling there are many things that you’re going to see that you’ve never heard of before,” Uncle Monty said. “Life is a conundrum of esoterica.”

Then he laughed, and inside a room filled with the most dangerous reptiles in the world, the Baudelaire children had never felt safer.

* * *

Violet chose a room that had an enormous window looking out onto the snake-shaped hedges on the front lawn. Uncle Monty had given her several large rolls of white paper, and she tacked up these on each wall so she could sketch out her inventing ideas, even if they came to her in the middle of the night. Klaus held the sheets of paper in place while Violet secured them to the wall using tacks she had made herself.

“What do you think of Uncle Monty?” she asked Klaus.

“He seems like a good person,” Klaus replied. “Nick was overreacting. Just because our parents aren’t here doesn’t mean we don’t have to clean up our own messes.”

“I agree wholeheartedly,” said Violet. “I really do think we’ll be safe here. Because even though Uncle Monty has rules, and his house is full of snakes, he doesn’t frighten me at all.”

They heard a thumping noise coming from the floor above them, as if an angry rhinoceros was going on a stampede through a supermarket up there.

Violet sighed. “That’ll be the twins.”

April and Colin arrived on the top floor of Uncle Monty’s house, out of breath. Colin started walking down the hall, opening doors and poking his head inside.

“How about this room? It has two beds.”

April looked inside. The room was spacious, well-lit, and painted in bright colors. There was a bench on one side that looked just right for inventing, and a couch and table on the other side that were perfect for reading.

Without waiting for an answer, Colin sat on the bed nearest to the couch. “I get to choose my side of the room first, since I’m older.”

She rolled her eyes. “Only by a few minutes.”

“Doesn’t matter! I was still born first.”

“You _look_ younger than me.”

“Not for long,” he countered. “In all seriousness, though, I’m curious about Uncle Monty’s spyglass. It’s the exact same spyglass as the one I found in Father’s desk.”

“Colin, it’s just a coincidence.”

“No,” he said. “Everything happens for a reason.”

April walked to the window and pulled the curtains open. She could see all the way down Lousy Lane, past the horseradish factory, and even a little ways beyond.

“We’re so high up,” she said. “I could build a pair of wings, jump out the window, and fly.”

“Icarus,” Sensible said, tugging on Lilac’s hand. She pointed toward the kitchen.

“Absolutely not,” Lilac said. “Your room will be right in between Violet’s and mine.”

She led her younger sister into a small, cozy room. One glance around the room revealed that it was filled with clever contraptions, from a rug made of fuzzy puzzle pieces to a ceiling with the letters of the alphabet painted on it—perfect for a three-year-old’s growing mind. Uncle Monty must have really wanted a family, Lilac thought, to have set up a room like this.

Sensible cautiously stepped inside. “Mine?”

Lilac nodded. “All yours. Make sure to keep the windows shut. You know how Violet feels about that.”

At that moment, Sunny crawled into Sensible’s new bedroom, carrying a raw carrot in her teeth. She crawled through the bathroom that connected Sensible’s room with the one next door. Lilac followed her, emerging into a room that was already filled with small, hard objects from all over the house.

“It looks like you’ve already picked out your room, Sunny.” Lilac picked up a rattle from the floor. Her younger sister had never liked rattles. “What’s this for?”

“Ink!” Sunny said.

Hearing its name, the Incredibly Deadly Viper slithered out from behind a houseplant and curled itself around the rattle. Sunny patted its head.

Content that Sensible and Sunny had things to bite and were far away from any flammable objects, Lilac brought Solitude to the room she had decided they would share. It was more of a ballroom than a bedroom, with high ceilings and thick black curtains over every tall window. The bed, which was covered in a damask bedspread, was the kind of bed that had a second, smaller bed pretending to be a drawer underneath it. Lilac only had to pull out the drawer, and Solitude had a little space of her own in which to sleep.

Solitude started fussing over a miniscule frog she had snuck out of the Reptile Room, and Lilac left to find Nick. He had chosen a bedroom on the ground floor. It jutted out from the rest of the house like a broken joint, and the ceiling was made of glass like in the Reptile Room. More interestingly, the room was filled with plants. Some were in pots, but more had crept in through tiny cracks in the walls, or were simply growing through the floorboards. Lilac jumped back as a green garter snake slithered across her path.

Nick was lying upside-down on the bed, looking up at the darkening sky.

“Hello, Lilac.”

She stepped carefully over the snake. “I just wanted to check in.”

“I’m sorry about the tea,” he said suddenly. “I really am. I should have helped you.”

She waved the apology away. “Don’t worry about it.”

“No, Uncle Monty was right. It’s not fair of me to leave all the worrying to you.”

“I don’t mind.”

“To make it up to you, I’ve done some worrying of my own.” He sat up. “Something strange is going on here. Mother and Father told us all sorts of stories that happened before we were born. So why doesn’t the name Montgomery Montgomery ring a bell? That’s not a name I would forget. And take a look at what I found.”

He got up and led Lilac to an ivy-covered door, so small that they both had to crouch down to pass through it, that opened into the backyard. Nick and Lilac wove through a maze of neatly trimmed hedges. The hedges eventually gave way to wild overgrowth as they approached the edge of Uncle Monty’s property. They stopped at the edge of a murky swamp.

Lilac peered over the edge. The swamp was bubbling and frothing. It was making a curious and sinister noise that sounded like a mixture of squelching and rumbling, as if it were a monster that had just swallowed a particularly large meal. The noise sent shivers up Lilac’s spine. And at the bottom of the swamp, obscured by the mud, a dark, human-shaped figure lay completely still.

Nick bent down and picked up something small. He held it up for Lilac to see. It was a dart with a white feather at the end of it. A drop of black liquid fell from the tip. It landed in the reeds with a malevolent hiss.

“Give me that.” Lilac took the poison dart from him. She wrapped it carefully in a handkerchief and tucked it away in her skirt pocket.

“There’s something out there,” he said.

She sighed, trying to ignore the prickling feeling under her skin. “There’s nothing out there, Nick.”

He pointed at the bubbling swamp. “If there’s nothing out there, then what was that noise?”

“I don’t know,” Lilac admitted. “But whatever unfortunate person ended up in that swamp had nothing to do with us. It’s not for us to worry about.”


	11. "I Thought I Would Never Be Happy Again"

The Baudelaires spent their first week happily in the Reptile Room with Uncle Monty. While he was telling them about different reptiles, Uncle Monty would often segue into stories from his travels, describing the people and reptiles he’d met on his journeys. And before too long, the Baudelaire orphans were telling Uncle Monty all about their own lives, and he was as interested in the Baudelaires’ stories as they were in his.

On the eighth day, however, Uncle Monty went out early in the morning and left the children a note. The note read:

> Dear _bambinis_ ,
> 
> I have gone into town to buy a few last things we need for the expedition: Peruvian wasp repellent, toothbrushes, canned peaches, and a fireproof canoe. It will take a while to find the peaches, so don't expect me back until after lunch. Stephano, Gustav’s replacement, will arrive today by taxi. Please make him feel welcome. As you know, it is only two days until the expedition, so please work very hard today.
> 
> Your giddy uncle,  
>  Monty

“What does ‘giddy’ mean?” Lilac asked when they had finished reading the note.

“Dizzy and excited,” said Klaus. “But what’s he excited about?”

“Maybe he’s excited about the expedition to Peru,” said Nick.

“It’s possible he’s excited about the new creatures he’ll discover,” said Colin.

“Perhaps he’s excited about having a new assistant,” said April.

“He might be excited about eating peaches,” said Sensible.

“Snake,” said Solitude.

“Or maybe he’s excited about us,” said Violet.

“Kindal!” Sunny said, which probably meant, “Or maybe he's excited about all these things.”

“I’m a little giddy myself,” Klaus said. “It’s really fun to live with Uncle Monty.”

“It certainly is,” April agreed. “After the fire, I thought I would never be happy again. But our time here has been wonderful.”

“I still miss our parents, though,” Klaus said. “No matter how nice Uncle Monty is, I wish we still lived in our real home.”

“Of course,” April said quickly. “I think we’ll always miss our parents. But I think we can miss them without being miserable all the time.”

“I suppose you’re right,” said Klaus. “Our parents wouldn’t want us to be miserable.”

“Maybe we _can_ make a home here,” Nick said, with guarded hope. “Uncle Monty is starting to grow on me.”

“Let’s get to work so Uncle Monty can see all we’ve accomplished when he comes home,” Lilac said. “I’ll get started on fixing up the snake traps. April, I could use your help.”

For the rest of the morning, the Baudelaire orphans worked quickly and steadily in the Reptile Room. Violet tackled the tall stack of letters that Uncle Monty had to mail to his associates, practicing writing their names and addresses with her left hand. By the time noon came, she could write the word _Stain’d_ in cursive just as well with her left hand as she could with her right.

Lilac spent the morning working on Uncle Monty’s snake traps, many of which were old and worn-down. She rubbed the rust off the metal traps, tightened the screws, and invented a leather buckle that would make each trap close quicker and more precisely.

“It seems rather cruel,” she remarked to April as a trap snapped shut with a _clang_. “If I were a snake, I wouldn’t want to be captured in a trap like this, unable to move for hours.”

“I agree,” said April. “Perhaps we could lure the snakes into a larger terrarium instead of a trap.”

“But what would we lure them in with?”

“Apple!” Solitude suddenly shrieked from across the room, where she and Sunny were playing with the Incredibly Deadly Viper. She held out a shiny red apple to the snake. It opened its mouth wide and swallowed the apple whole.

Solitude clapped her hands in delight. “Snake!”

“Sol certainly seems giddy,” April said. “I didn’t know the Incredibly Deadly Viper liked apples.”

“That’s it!” Lilac said. “We can lure snakes into their terrariums using food!”

“I can invent some _cuisine de serpent_ ,” Sensible offered. “What else do snakes like to eat?”

“I don’t know,” said Lilac. “Colin, Klaus, could you two find a book on what kind of food Peruvian snakes eat?”

The boys gave her a thumbs up and rushed to the library, each determined to find the perfect book first. They almost knocked over Nick, who was carrying a large tray full of test tubes.

“Hey!” he shouted. “Be careful! These test tubes are full of new venom samples. Some of them could burn right through the floor.”

“Burn?” Sensible asked, casually flipping an apple pancake. Seeing what she was doing, Lilac raced to the stove and turned it off.

“Raw food _only_.”

Sensible sighed, disappointed. “Tartare?”

A car horn sounded from the front of the house.

“I expect that's the new assistant,” Colin said, looking up from _The Big Peruvian Book of Small Peruvian Snakes_. “I hope he's as nice as Uncle Monty.”

“Me too," April said. “It would be unpleasant to travel to Peru with somebody who was boring or mean. Let's go find out what Stephano is like.”

“Gerja!” Solitude said, which probably meant, “I would like to meet him too!”

Colin picked up Solitude, and the three of them left the Reptile Room and walked out the front door to find a taxi parked next to the snake-shaped hedges. A man with a long beard and no eyebrows was getting out of the backseat, carrying a black suitcase with a shiny silver padlock.

“I'm not going to give you a tip,” the bearded man was saying to the taxi driver, “because you talk too much. Not everybody wants to hear about your boring library, you know.”

“That’s real mean of you, sir,” the taxi driver said. “We need those tips to keep our shelves stocked.”

“And,” added a voice that came surprisingly from underneath the seat, near the taxi’s foot pedals, “libraries aren’t boring. In every library, there is a single book that can answer the question that burns like a fire in the—”

The bearded man slammed the door shut. The taxi sped off. The bearded man turned around and noticed Solitude and the Baudelaire twins standing in the front door.

“Good morning,” he said. “I am Stephano, Dr. Montgomery’s new assistant. How do you do?”

“It’s afternoon,” said Colin. “And you’re Count Olaf.”

It was true. Stephano may have shaved off his eyebrow and put on a fake beard, but there was no disguising his shiny eyes, his wheezy voice, and the eye tattoo on his ankle.

“Perhaps one of you might carry my suitcase into my room,” Stephano said, ignoring Colin. “The ride along that smelly road was dull and unpleasant, and I’m very tired.”

“You’re Count Olaf,” said April. “And if anyone ever deserved to travel along Lousy Lane, it’s you!”

“We will _not_ help you with your luggage,” said Colin, “because we will _not_ let you in this house.”

He moved to shut the door. But before he could close it, Stephano pulled out a long, wicked-looking knife and wedged it between the door and its frame. Colin jumped back.

“That's a forged steel Fairbairn-Sykes fighting knife!”

April stared at him. “How the hell do you know so much about knives?”

Stephano tugged the knife out of the door and walked toward April and Colin, forcing the twins to back up further into the house.

“Who is Count Olaf?” he asked. “My name is Stephano. I am here to assist Montgomery Montgomery with his upcoming expedition to Peru. I assume you three are servants who work in the Montgomery home.”

“We’re not servants, we’re children,” said April.

“And you’re not Stephano,” said Colin. “You may have grown a beard and shaved your eyebrow, but you’re still the same despicable person and we will not let you in this house.”

“Really?” said Stephano. “Because it looks like you already have.”

“Persona!” Solitude said, which probably meant, “You’re not fooling anyone. You’re Count Olaf!”

“I don’t know what you’re saying,” he said, “but if I did, and I were this Count Olaf you speak of, I would think that you were being very rude. And if I thought you were rude, I might get angry. And if I got angry, who knows what I would do?”

He shrugged. April and Colin looked at each other for a moment. Then April bent down and picked up Stephano’s heavy suitcase. Colin put down Solitude to help carry the suitcase up the stairs, but even with the two of them carrying it, the weight made them stagger. Stephano followed closely behind them, breathing down their necks and pointing his knife at their backs.

“I see you children haven’t changed a bit,” he said. “April, you’re obviously as stubborn as ever. Colin, you’re still wearing those idiotic glasses from reading too many books. And I can see little Solitude here still has nine toes instead of ten.”

“Fut!” Solitude shrieked, which probably meant, “I do not!”

“What are you talking about?” Colin said impatiently. “My sister has ten toes, like the vast majority of people.”

“Really?” Stephano said. “That's odd. I remember that she lost one of her toes in an accident. I seem to recall there was a man who was so confused by being called repeatedly by the wrong name that he accidentally dropped a knife on her little foot and severed one of her toes.”

His eyes shone even brighter, as if he were telling a joke.

“You wouldn't dare,” April said, looking down at her sister’s bare foot.

“Let’s not discuss what I would or would not dare to do,” Stephano said. “Let us discuss, rather—”

But Stephano never had the chance to say what he would rather discuss, because Lilac emerged from the Reptile Room at the bottom of the stairs.

“April? Colin? What’s taking so—”

She froze when she saw Stephano. Her eyes darted from his face, to his ankle, to the knife he was brandishing at the twins.

“You’re Count Olaf.”

“Yes, yes, we’ve been through all this several times already,” he said. “My name is Stephano, and if you refuse to believe me, I will have no choice but to use this knife to prove to you that I am Stephano.”

For a moment, Lilac just stared at him. Then her eyes traveled upward, above Stephano’s head, looking at something high up on the wall that the twins couldn’t see. And she screamed.

“Look! The Incredibly Deadly Viper! It’s gotten loose!”

“What? Where?” Stephano twisted around, trying to find the snake. April grabbed Colin’s hand and ran down the stairs, Stephano close behind. Lilac flung open the door to the Reptile Room. As the five children tumbled inside, Stephano threw the knife at them. It soared beautifully through the air, blade over handle—and embedded itself in the intricate door of the Reptile Room as Colin slammed it shut.

He sank into a chair, trembling. April leaned against one of the reptile cages and put her face in her hands. And Solitude curled up into a little ball on the floor and refused to move.

“What happened?” Sensible asked them.

“Olaf,” Solitude whimpered.

Nick swore. Lilac glared at him.

“He’s disguised himself as Uncle Monty’s assistant, Stephano,” Colin explained. “And he has a knife.”

They could hear Stephano banging on the door.

“Baudelaires!” he shouted. “I’ve brought you a present. It’s very sharp.”

“How did he find us?” Klaus whispered. “How did he get to be Uncle Monty’s assistant? What is he doing here?”

“He vowed that he’d get his hands on the Baudelaire fortune,” Violet said. “That was the last thing he said to me before he escaped. He said he’d get our fortune if it was the last thing he ever did.”

Violet didn’t add that Count Olaf had also said that once he got their fortune, he’d do away with all nine of the Baudelaire siblings. She did not need to add it.

“What can we do?” Nick asked. “Uncle Monty might not be back for hours.”

“Maybe we can call Mr. Poe,” April said, taking her hands away from her face and picking up Solitude, who was still curled up into a ball. “It's the middle of banking hours, but maybe he could leave the bank for an emergency.”

“He wouldn't believe us,” Klaus said. “Remember when we tried to tell him about Count Olaf when we lived there? He took such a long time to realize the truth, it was almost too late. I think we should run away. If we leave right now, we could probably get to town in time to catch a train far away from here.”

“Where would we go?” Colin asked.

“Anywhere,” Klaus said. “Anywhere but here. We could go far away where Count Olaf wouldn’t find us, and change our names so no one would know who we were.”

“We haven’t any money,” Lilac pointed out. “How could we live by ourselves?”

“We could get jobs,” Colin replied. “Those taxi drivers mentioned a library. Nick, Klaus, and I could work there, maybe. You, Violet, and April could work in some sort of mechanical factory. And Sensible could work in a restaurant. Solitude and Sunny probably can’t get a job at their age, but in a few years they could.”

The nine Baudelaires tried to picture leaving Uncle Monty and living by themselves. It was a very lonely thought.

“We can’t live on the run forever,” Violet said finally.

“I can’t imagine it’s hard,” said Nick. “We’d just have to evade the authorities, fake our deaths in an unreliable newspaper, and spend the rest of our days hiding out in a series of anonymous, interchangeable motels.”

“Sounds like a lonely life,” said Sensible.

“It does,” Colin said miserably. “But we’d be safe.”

“We can’t leave,” said Lilac. “Count Olaf found us once, and I’m sure he’d find us again, no matter how far we went. I think we should just wait for Uncle Monty to come back, and tell him what happened. He’ll believe us.”

“Will he really?” Colin asked.

April nodded. “If we tell him about the tattoo, he’ll at least ask Count Olaf—or Stephano, I suppose—for an explanation.”

“But Uncle Monty is the one who _hired_ Stephano,” Colin said. “For all we know, Uncle Monty and Stephano have planned something together. They have the same spyglass.”

“Noway!” Sunny said, which probably meant, “Don’t be ridiculous! I can’t believe that Uncle Monty would be in cahoots with Count Olaf. He’s been so kind and generous to us.”

“Sunny’s right,” April said. “Besides, if they were working together, Count Olaf wouldn’t insist on using a different name.”

“That’s true,” Klaus said thoughtfully. “So we wait for Uncle Monty.”

“There’s no need,” Nick said, looking out through the glass walls. “Uncle Monty has just returned.”

Uncle Monty’s jeep was pulling into the driveway, a large canoe strapped to the roof of the jeep. Uncle Monty got out of the jeep, weighed down by several bags of supplies. Seeing the children through the glass walls of the Reptile Room, he smiled and waved, but the children were far too nervous to smile or wave back.

“Hello!” Stephano opened the front door to meet Uncle Monty.

“He’ll see right through Stephano’s disguise, won’t he?” April asked as Uncle Monty began to speak with Stephano.

“Maybe not,” Nick murmured. “He’s letting Stephano into the house.”

They heard a knock at the door of the Reptile Room.

“Baudelaires?” Uncle Monty called out.

“Is that you, Dr. Montgomery?” Colin asked.

“Yes,” he replied. “Let me just unlock all these important security measures, and I’ll join you in the Reptile Room.”

He imitated the sounds of turning gears, electrical buzzing, and whirring machinery for quite some time before finally opening the door. Leaving it open, he smiled warmly at the Baudelaires.

“I am so sorry, _bambinis_ , that you were frightened by that man who arrived earlier.” he said, his voice unusually loud. “It makes sense that you were alarmed, being that he chased you up and down the stairs with a knife, but there is nothing to fear. He is my new assistant, Stephano. I have seen his papers, and everything is in order. So you see, there’s nothing to be worried about.”

He shook his head slightly, as if to say, _Of course I don’t believe there’s nothing to be worried about! That man upstairs is obviously Count Olaf!_

“Oh yes,” Violet said slowly. “I… I see now.”

“How silly we were to be afraid,” Colin said, catching on.

“Precisely, Baudelaires!” He winked. “Stephano has explained to me that he has a very strict fitness regimen, where he has to run up and down the stairs brandishing a knife at least three times a day. So that makes perfect sense.”

He paused, waiting for a response.

“I might join him on that exercise regimen,” Klaus said.

“You’ve never exercised a day in your life,” Nick pointed out.

Uncle Monty shushed him quietly. “Well,” he continued loudly, “maybe today will be the day that Klaus starts!”

“Maybe it will,” Klaus said.

“So now that that is cleared up, would you mind helping me bring things in from my jeep?”

“Of course,” said Violet. The nine Baudelaires followed him outside.


	12. "Accidents Happen All The Time"

“I got all my shopping done, and I even brought takeout for dinner,” Uncle Monty said as they walked to the jeep.

“Uncle Monty,” Lilac said, “we have something very important to tell you.”

“I’m all ears,” he said, “but first let me show you the wasp repellent I picked up. I’m so glad Colin read up on the insect situation in Peru, because the other repellents I have would have been no use at all. This one contains a chemical called—”

“Uncle Monty,” Colin interrupted, “what we have to tell you really can’t wait.”

“Colin,” Uncle Monty said, surprised, “it’s not polite to interrupt while someone else is talking. Surely your parents taught you that.”

“Of course they did. But what we have to tell you,” he began, then stopped. Something had caught his eye. Stephano was standing near the snake-shaped hedges, holding his long knife. When he saw Colin was looking, he turned the knife this way and that, letting it reflect the light of the setting sun.

“Uncle Monty,” April tried, “we have to—”

Colin grabbed her arm and jerked his head toward Stephano. He didn’t say a word, and he didn’t have to. The twins remembered Stephano’s threat about Solitude’s toes all too well.

“Now,” Uncle Monty continued, completely oblivious, “we don’t have much time before the movie, so help me take down this canoe.”

He unfastened the canoe from the roof of the jeep. With Violet’s help, he lifted it so his head was hidden beneath the canoe.

“Come inside, quickly,” he whispered.

The nine Baudelaires scrambled under the canoe. The canoe was long and very narrow, so they had to line up single file, like a row of ducklings.

“I am so sorry, Baudelaires,” Uncle Monty said once everyone was underneath the canoe. “I had no idea that our enemies would catch up to us so quickly. It’s clear now that I can’t turn my back for a second.”

“So you recognized him?” Lilac asked.

“Of course I recognized him,” said Uncle Monty. “I’m not some half-witted banker or some member of the High Court who’s so starstruck that I can’t see what’s right in front of me. He can wear as many lab coats as he wants, and present me with as many ridiculous papers as he wants. Stephano is no more a lab assistant than I’m a three-mouthed Brazilian waxed turtle.”

“What are we going to do?” Colin asked. “Call the authorities?”

“Do you think when I was climbing Mount Felix searching for the goat-eating cobra, that I called the authorities?” Uncle Monty answered. “No! If we call the police or Mr. Poe or the official fire department, that so-called lab assistant will have us in his clutches before they can darken my doorstep. And we all know Stephano does not work alone.”

“What do you mean?” Lilac asked.

“I don't mean to be vainglorious, but I really am one of the most widely respected herpetologists in the world. And because of this, I'm sad to say, many people are jealous of me. And when people are jealous, they will do anything. They will do crazy things. When I was getting my herpetology degree, my roommate was so envious of a new toad I had discovered that he stole and ate my only specimen. I had to X-ray his stomach, and use the X-rays rather than the toad in my presentation. And something tells me we may have a similar situation here.”

Colin blinked. “I’m afraid I don't quite follow you.”

“Me neither,” said Klaus. “What in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s name are you talking about, Uncle Monty?”

“This man who is calling himself Stephano,” Uncle Monty said, “is really a member of the Herpetological Society, and he is here to try and find the Incredibly Deadly Viper so he can preempt my presentation. I think this Stephano is going to steal my snake and present it to the Herpetological Society. Because it’s a new species, there’s no way I can prove I discovered it. Before we know it, the Incredibly Deadly Viper will be called the Stephano Snake, or something dreadful like that!”

“He’s not a Herpetological Society spy,” Nick burst out. “He’s Count Olaf!”

“I know just what you mean!” Uncle Monty said excitedly. “This sort of behavior is indeed as dastardly as that terrible man’s. That is why I’m doing this.”

He waved a bunch of folded papers in the air. “As you know, tomorrow we are leaving for Peru. These are our tickets for the five o’clock voyage on the _Prospero_ , a fine ship that will take us across the sea to South America. There’s one ticket for me, one for Stephano, and eight for you children, but not one for Sunny because we’re going to hide her in a suitcase to save money.”

“Deepo!”

“I’m kidding about that,” he said. “But I’m not kidding about this.”

Uncle Monty, his face flushed with excitement, took one of the folded papers and began ripping it into tiny pieces.

“This is Stephano’s ticket. He’s not going to Peru with us after all. Tomorrow morning, I’m going to tell him that he needs to stay here and look after my specimens instead. At the same time, I’ll telephone a dear associate of mine, and she’ll take the reptiles away in her taxi so Stephano can’t get to them. That way we can run a successful expedition in peace. As you can see, your Uncle Monty has the situation in hand.”

He lifted the canoe away from their heads.

“Come now, my dears. We’ve wasted enough morning on talk. We have to— _ow_!”

Uncle Monty fell to the ground with a cry of surprise. A heavy brass reading lamp had fallen on him and knocked him over. He got up, wincing slightly.

“It’s a good thing that didn’t land on my head,” he said, “or it really could have done some damage.”

“But where did it come from?” Lilac asked.

“It must have fallen from the window,” Uncle Monty said, pointing up to where Klaus’s room was. “Whose room is that? Klaus, I believe it’s yours. You must be more careful. You can’t dangle heavy objects out the window like that. Look what almost happened.”

“But that lamp wasn't anywhere near my window," Klaus said. “I keep it in the alcove, so I can read in that large chair.”

“Really, Klaus,” Uncle Monty said, standing up and handing him the lamp. It was so heavy that he nearly fell over. “Do you honestly expect me to believe that the lamp danced over to the window and leaped onto my shoulder? Please put this back in your room, in a safe place, and we'll say no more about it.”

“But—”

“I'll help you, Klaus,” Lilac interrupted. She took the lamp from him. “We’ll find a place for it where it’s safe.”

“Well, don't be too long,” Uncle Monty said, rubbing his shoulder. “We'll see you in the Reptile Room. Come, children.”

“You know very well,” Klaus whispered to Lilac as they walked up the stairs, “that I wasn’t careless with this lamp.”

“Of course I know that,” Lilac whispered back. “Colin had to carry that lamp up to your room. You never would have been able to move it all the way to the window.”

He frowned. “Yes, I could have.”

She laughed. “Could not.”

“Could too.”

“Could not,” she said again, unaware that she had injured Klaus’s pride. “And anyway, there’s no use trying to explain that to Uncle Monty. He thinks Stephano is a herpetological spy. You know as well as I do that Stephano was responsible for this.”

“How clever of you to figure that out,” said Stephano, who was standing at the top of the stairs. “But then, you’ve always been clever children. A little too clever for my taste, but you won’t be around for long, so I’m not troubled by it.”

“You’re not very clever yourself,” Klaus said fiercely. “This heavy brass lamp almost hit us, but if anything happens to my siblings or me, you’ll never get your hands on the Baudelaire fortune.”

“Dear me, dear me,” Stephano said. “If I wanted to harm you, orphan, your blood would already be pouring down these stairs like a waterfall. No, I’m not going to harm a hair on any Baudelaire head—not here in this house. You needn’t be afraid of me, little ones, until we find ourselves in a location where crimes are more difficult to trace.”

“And where would that be?” Klaus asked. “We plan to stay right here until we grow up.”

“Really?” Stephano said, feigning surprise. “Why, I had the impression we were leaving the country tomorrow. We’re going to Peru so you little children can learn how to be volu—”

“Uncle Monty tore up your ticket,” Klaus said triumphantly. “You’re not going with us!”

Lilac gasped and grabbed Klaus’s arm, but the damage was already done. He pulled away from her, a hurt look on his face.

“Let go of me. Your nails are dirty.”

He ran down the hallway and disappeared into his room, leaving Lilac and Stephano at the top of the stairs.

“Your brother’s right, you know,” Stephano said. “Your mother always had dirty nails too, from all that inventing she did. It’s too bad the time she spent on those inventions didn’t help her survive. If anything, all that oil under her fingernails made her more flammable.”

He smiled. “Is it true that Dr. Montgomery ripped up my ticket?”

“It’s true,” said Lilac. “You won’t be coming with us to Peru. And if you try to board the _Prospero_ , I’ll stop you.”

She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small object that made Stephano’s eyes go wide. His smile disappeared.

“I wouldn't rely on that,” he said. “Even the best plans can change if there's an accident. And accidents happen all the time.”

“Oh, but of course.”

Uncle Monty appeared at the end of the hallway, holding a large plastic bag of Chinese takeout.

“In our line of work?” he said. “Accidents happen all the time. Now let’s eat quickly, everyone. We don’t want to be late for the movies.”

* * *

The Baudelaires’ eighth dinner with Uncle Monty was the longest and most terrible dinner the orphans had ever had. Stephano kept the children under his constant surveillance so they couldn’t possibly talk to Uncle Monty, or even amongst themselves, alone.

Halfway through the meal, Violet felt the cold blade of Stephano’s knife rub against her knee. At first, she froze, too afraid to even breathe. But then she remembered what Uncle Monty had said to her on their first day in the Reptile Room. Slowly and carefully so as to not draw suspicion, she reached down with her left hand and grabbed the handle of Stephano’s knife. His grip loosened in surprise, and she twisted the knife out of his grasp. Now Violet was the one holding a blade under the tablecloth.

“Stay away from me,” she muttered, just loud enough for Stephano to hear.

“What was that, Violet?” Uncle Monty asked.

She smiled sweetly. “I was just telling Stephano how excited I am to see a movie tonight.”

“I was told the title of the film in advance this time,” said Uncle Monty. “It’s called _Zombies in the Snow_. Have you seen it before, Stephano?”

“I don’t think I will be joining tonight,” he said. “I thought I’d stay in and read up on… poisonous venoms.”

“Well, _Stephano_ , you must join us,” Violet objected. “Don’t you agree, Uncle Monty?”

“Of course,” Uncle Monty said. “We have to celebrate your arrival. I insist you come.”

“I insist upon staying here,” Stephano said.

“Well, I insisted first.”

“Well, I insisted louder.”

“They sound like us,” Colin whispered to April.

“With all due respect,” Uncle Monty said, “I feel a little uncomfortable leaving my reptiles alone with a relative stranger.”

Stephano glanced at Violet, then at the knife under the table. He sighed. “Fine.”

They finished dinner and piled into Uncle Monty’s jeep, which was really too small for nine children to fit inside. The older Baudelaires all had to squeeze into one row of seats, and the babies had to sit on their siblings’ laps.

“I’m sure this could be done a better way,” Colin mumbled. “I can’t breathe under Sensible.”

“If we had two automobiles, everything would be solved,” April said. “Violet, you can drive a little, right?”

“I only have a learner’s permit,” Violet said. “Lilac has probably driven more than I have.”

“Roadster,” Solitude said, which probably meant, “And anyway, our parents’ automobile burned up along with the rest of our belongings.”

“Once Violet is eighteen,” Klaus said, “we can use the Baudelaire fortune to buy a new automobile.”

Lilac nodded. “A big minivan, with enough seats for everyone and plenty of legroom.”

“And it can fly,” said April, “and turn into a submarine, and have 200 RPM tranquilizer-firing machine guns.”

“That’s just the Batmobile, April.”

“Then we’ll get the Batmobile.”

Violet sighed. “But we can’t touch our fortune for three years. Three years is a long time to wait.”

“That’s true,” April said. “Three years ago, I had just started collecting comic books. It took a long time to build up that collection.”

“I remember,” Colin said. “You were interested in those comics about the turtles who were named after Renaissance artists.”

She nodded. “I liked the woman who was a computer programmer, because she had the same name as me.”

“I think things were simpler three years ago.”

April stared out the window as the jeep pulled out of the driveway. “They were.”

They drove down Lousy Lane and into the city. They passed through the banking district and traveled down a long, dark street lined with huge trees that blocked the evening light. Finally, they arrived across the street from the movie theater. Solitude took Lilac’s hand as they crossed the street. When she let go, her palm was covered with black paint.

“Noir?” she asked, looking up at Lilac.

Lilac blushed. “It’s nail polish.”

“Is that some goth thing?” Nick asked.

“No,” said Lilac. “I just thought my nails would look better if I… never mind.”

They were standing in front of the movie theater, where a brightly lit poster advertised Dr. Sebald’s newest film, _Zombies in the Snow_.

“A daring survivor of a zombie attack and his young son Rölf dispose of a wicked army of the undead,” Colin read from the poster. “Using barriers of oak, the brave townspeople capture the zombies in a trap, lighting a fire to destroy the zombies before the morning bell rings.”

“Great,” said Nick. “The poster gave away the ending.”

“Seventh row, right of center,” said Uncle Monty. “That’s the best place.”

They walked down the aisle of the mostly-deserted theater and filed into their seats.

“That’s what our mother always said,” Colin said.

“Who do you think taught it to me?” Uncle Monty grinned. “If you’d like, Colin, after we return home, I can show you some more tricks your mother taught me when we were children. For example, she taught me how to use tea bags to fix smelly shoes. Ah, but the movie is starting.”

The screen flickered to life, showing a snowy village. A group of townspeople appeared, accompanied by the ear-splitting ringing of a bell. As the movie began, April heard the sound of a pencil scratching on paper. She looked down the row and saw that Stephano was furiously taking notes. When he wasn’t writing, he was counting on his fingers. This note-taking, then counting, the note-taking again went on until another alarm bell sounded and all the townspeople fled.

April glanced at Uncle Monty, who didn’t seem to have noticed his assistant’s strange behavior. She turned her attention back to the movie. Only one woman remained in the village, singing a rather grim song.

> They’ll eat my feet, they’ll eat my head,  
>  I’m just a meal for the walking dead.

* * *

That night, none of the Baudelaire orphans slept. They instead congregated in Violet’s room, where the rolls of white paper on the walls were useful for puzzling out a difficult situation. The Baudelaires had spent nights like this before, but they were usually meant to solve a brain teaser that their parents had hidden under the kitchen table, or to plan a gift for the twins’ B’nei Mitzvah. They had never gathered in Violet’s room to discuss circumstances as dire as this.

“I see you haven't worked much on your inventions,” Colin said, looking around at the blank walls. “I haven't been reading at all. When Count Olaf is around, it sure puts a damper on the imagination.”

“Well, imagination or not, let’s try to hash this out,” Violet said, writing “STEPHANO” in wobbly left-hand letters on one of the rolls of paper. “Count Olaf, calling himself Stephano, has come to this house in disguise.”

“He’s obviously after the Baudelaire fortune,” Lilac said.

“Once he gets his hands on it, he plans to kill us,” Klaus said.

“His theater troupe is most likely lying in wait,” Nick said.

“Tada,” Solitude murmured solemnly, which probably meant, “It’s a loathsome situation in which we find ourselves.”

“However,” Violet said, “if he harms us, there’s no way he can get to our fortune. That's why he tried to marry me last time.”

“Thank God that didn't work,” Klaus said, shivering. “Then Count Olaf would be my brother-in-law.”

“And, you know, Violet’s _husband_ ,” said Nick. “It’s not all about you, Klaus.”

“Sorry. _Our_ brother-in-law.”

“But this time he’s not planning to marry you,” Lilac said. “He said something to me about an accident, and about heading to a location where crimes are more difficult to trace.”

“That must mean Peru,” said Violet. She wrote the word “PERU” on the wall and circled it twice.

“But Stephano isn’t going to Peru,” April said. “Uncle Monty tore up his ticket.”

“Doog!” Sunny shrieked and pounded her little fist on the floor.

“Oh, doog yourself,” Nick replied. “Does it even matter that Stephano doesn’t have a ticket? Remember, he has a knife.”

Sensible shook her head. “Not anymore.”

“What do you mean?” Lilac asked.

“Violet took it.”

Eight Baudelaire heads turned toward Violet, whose pen was raised in the air.

“Stab?” Solitude asked.

“I took the knife from Stephano during dinner,” Violet said. “But then we had to go to the movies, and I couldn’t take it out from underneath the table without Uncle Monty noticing.”

“So what did you do with it?” Nick asked.

“I left it on the floor, under the table,” Violet replied. “I assume Stephano picked it up.”

“Maybe not,” said Colin. “You said it yourself, Violet. No one could have left the dinner table carrying a huge knife. Uncle Monty would have said something.”

“So it might still be under the table,” April said. “We have to get it before Stephano does.”

“I’ll go!” Klaus shouted, almost before April had finished speaking.

The other Baudelaires glanced at each other. This was very unlike Klaus.

“Are you sure?” Nick asked skeptically.

“Of course I’m sure.”

“What if Stephano finds you?” Colin said.

“I’ll fight him,” said Klaus. “I’ll run him through with his own blade.”

“That’s impossible,” said Violet. “It’s a knife, not a longsword.”

“Whatever. I’ll just stab him, then.”

“You’re not stabbing anyone,” Lilac said. “For one, have you ever actually stabbed someone before?”

Sensible glanced sideways at her older sister. “Have _you_?”

“No, but I’ve read _Julius Caesar_ ,” said Klaus. “ _En garde!_ Remember our swordfight, Sunny?”

“Easypeasy,” Sunny replied, which probably meant, “I remember. I beat you, and I’m a baby.”

Klaus made a disgusted sound. “Well, I’m going to get that knife,” he said. “And you can’t stop me.”

He stood up, brushed off his vest, and left. There was a stunned silence as the Baudelaires tried to process the un-Klaus-like manner in which Klaus had just acted. For a few moments, the only sound in the house was Klaus, running down the stairs.

Finally, April spoke up. “Is he okay?”

“He’s fine,” Lilac said. “I said something to him in the hall. It’s nothing.”

“Hmm,” Violet said. “Sol, can you—”

“On it,” said Solitude. She, too, got up and tottered out of the room. The door swung shut behind her as the remaining seven Baudelaires turned their attention back to the drawing board.


	13. "What Else Didn't Our Parents Tell Us About?"

Solitude followed Klaus down the stairs, completely hidden in the darkness. She followed him down the hall. The house was eerily quiet, as if it had been deserted for years. She had made it halfway to the dining room when she felt that something was terribly wrong, and that feeling of wrongness had something to do with Uncle Monty’s snakes. So she gave up following Klaus. Instead, she turned back the way she had come, and entered the Reptile Room.

The inside of the Reptile Room was dark and quiet, illuminated only by the moonlight coming in through the glass ceiling. In the dim glow, she could see only silhouettes of the various reptiles as they moved around in their cages.

“Monty?” she called out. There was no response.

She tried again. “Ink?”

With a hiss, the Incredibly Deadly Viper curled around her feet. She knelt down and picked it up in her arms. The black snake was shaking like a leaf, and its bright green eyes were closed tight in terror.

Solitude shook too as she walked unsteadily toward the library, where she could just make out a large, shadowy mass huddled in the corner. In the silver moonlight, Solitude could see it was Uncle Monty, sleeping quietly. He must have been reading so late into the night that he had fallen asleep in the library, like Colin and Klaus sometimes did. She needed to tell him that something had gone wrong in the Reptile Room. She tugged gently on his pant leg, but he did not stir. She tugged harder. He still didn’t move.

“Divo soom?” she asked. This did not wake up Uncle Monty either.

Confused and afraid, Solitude started to cry. Hearing her sobs, the uncaged reptiles crawled or slithered toward her. They rubbed themselves against her legs, trying to comfort her. The broken-hearted crocodile padded in a circle around Uncle Monty.

“Woe is me,” it moaned. “Woe is me.”

At that moment, the brightest ray of moonlight hit the library, illuminating Uncle Monty’s face. His mouth was slightly agape, as if he were surprised, and his eyes were wide open, but he didn't appear to see Solitude.

Solitude saw Uncle Monty and she knew that he was dead, just like her parents were. And that meant, as Lilac had explained that first night at Mr. Poe’s house, that he was going to be put in the ground, and he could never come back to visit.

She screamed in despair, a piercing sound that echoed through the Reptile Room. The reptiles at her feet scattered, and even Ink slithered away. Solitude shut her eyes tight, not wanting to look at Uncle Monty’s pale, pale face.

“Klaus?” she whimpered. “Klaus?”

But Klaus was not there. He had tiptoed into the dining room. The room looked different in the dark. All the furniture had turned into dark shapes that he only vaguely recognized, like the words to a song that your parents might have sung to you in your cradle, when you were very young.

A music box on the mantel was playing a nursery rhyme about a naval disaster. Klaus hummed the tune to himself as he walked toward the dinner table, pretending that he was more confident than he felt. Carefully and quietly, he pulled Violet’s chair away from the table. He knelt down and ducked underneath the table. Then he reached out and swept his arm across the floor, expecting to feel the handle or blade of a knife. But he felt nothing. The knife was gone.

Klaus realized the music box had stopped playing.

“My, my, my, my, my,” said a voice behind him. “What do we have here?”

Klaus’s stomach sank. Trembling with fear, he crawled out from underneath the table and looked up. Standing over him was Stephano, holding his black suitcase with the shiny silver padlock. As the first morning rays of light appeared, they reflected off the knife he was holding, and it glinted wickedly in the sun.

* * *

Upstairs in Violet’s room, the seven Baudelaires heard Solitude’s faint scream.

Violet dropped her pen. “What was that?”

They stood completely still for several minutes, barely breathing, until someone knocked loudly on the door. The children blinked and looked at one another.

“Who could that be at this hour?” Colin asked.

“Sol?” Sunny suggested.

Without waiting to be let inside, whoever it was simply turned the knob, and the door swung slowly open. There stood Stephano, his eyes shining brighter than they ever had before. Klaus was standing in front of him, his face pale with fear.

“Good morning,” Stephano said. “It’s time to leave for Peru. There is just room for nine orphans and myself in the jeep, so get a move on.”

“We told you yesterday that you weren’t going,” said Lilac. “There are only ten tickets.”

“It’s your Uncle Monty who isn’t going.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Nick said. “Uncle Monty would sooner die than miss this expedition.”

“Ask him,” Stephano said. His eyes were shining as if he’d just told a joke. “Why don't you ask him? He’s down in the Reptile Room.”

 _It’s a trap,_ Colin thought. He shook his head firmly. “No, I don’t think we will. We already know Uncle Monty has no intention of letting you take us to Peru alone.”

“Oh, I think you’re going to the Reptile Room whether you like it or not.”

Stephano moved his arm forward a few inches, and Klaus sucked in his breath. Stephano turned a little, revealing the knife he was pointing at Klaus’s back.

They had no choice but to let Stephano lead them down the stairs and into the library of the Reptile Room. Nervously, Colin switched on one of the reading lamps. He stared into the unseeing eyes of Uncle Monty, who was crumpled in the corner. Somehow he looked even worse under brighter light. His face, usually so rosy, was very pale, and under his left eye were two small holes that looked like they had been made by the two fangs of a snake.

Sensible reached out to touch him, then pulled her hand back. “Monty…”

“What a terrible accident has happened here,” said Stephano, a look of brummagem surprise on his face. “Snakebite. Whoever discovers this will be most upset.”

“You—” Violet began to say, but she couldn’t bring herself to finish.

“Of course, after they discover that Dr. Montgomery is dead, they'll wonder what became of those repulsive orphans he had lying around the house,” Stephano continued. “But they’ll be long gone. Speaking of which, it’s time to leave. The _Prospero_ sails at five o’clock from Hazy Harbor, and I'd like to be the first passenger aboard. That way I’ll have time for a bottle of wine before lunch.”

“How could you?” April shouted. “How could you do this? You—you k—”

She burst into tears.

“You killed him,” Colin finished for her. “You’re a murderer.”

“Why, Colin, I'm surprised,” Stephano said, walking over to Uncle Monty's body. “A smarty-pants boy like you should be able to figure out that your chubby old uncle died from snakebite, not from murder.”

“You can’t die from murder,” Klaus said. “Murder is the act of killing, not a cause of death.”

“Look at those teeth marks,” Stephano went on. “Look at his pale, pale face. Look at these staring eyes.”

“Stop it!” Violet said. “Don’t talk like that!”

“You're right,” Stephano said. “There’s no time for chit-chat. We have a ship to catch! Let’s move!”

“We're not going anywhere with you,” April said, trying to stop her tears. “We’ll stay here until the police come.”

Stephano sighed. “I am so _tired_ ,” he snarled, “of having to _explain_ everything to you. You’re supposed to be so very smart, and yet you always seem to forget about _this_!”

He jabbed the knife at Klaus. “This is my knife. It is very sharp and very eager to hurt you—almost as eager as I am. If you don’t do what I say, your four-eyed brother will suffer bodily harm. Is that clear enough for you? Now, get in the damn jeep.”

The Baudelaire orphans numbly followed Stephano out of the Reptile Room, through the front door of the house, and into the backseat of the jeep. They were too terrified to speak, almost too terrified to breathe, and almost _almost_ too terrified to notice that one of their siblings was not with them.

* * *

“This is all my fault,” Klaus said as Stephano started the engine. “I told Stephano that Uncle Monty had ripped up his ticket.”

“Yeah, that was a real dumbass thing to say,” Nick spat. “You messed up, Klaus. How does it feel?”

“Nick, don’t do this,” Lilac said.

He ignored her. “And why did you go back downstairs? What possessed you to go after the knife? Are you trying to save up dumbass points? Did you think that this would make you some sort of hero? News flash: you’re not a hero, and this isn’t a storybook.”

“Nick, _stop it!_ ” Lilac shouted.

“Uncle Monty,” he shouted back, “would still be _alive_ if it weren’t for Klaus!”

Upon hearing that statement, Klaus broke down sobbing. Nick blinked, taken aback.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean—”

“Maybe I _did_ want to be the hero,” said Klaus. “Is that so bad? I’m sick of having to be protected and helped all the time. Just once, I wanted to be like you and Colin.” He looked down at his lap. “And now Uncle Monty is dead.”

The children fell silent as the jeep began to travel down Lousy Lane.

“What was the last conversation we had with him?” Violet asked quietly. “We were so anxious after _Zombies in the Snow_. I don’t think we even told him goodnight.”

“I think we told him ‘thank you’ at the ticket booth,” April said. “At least our last words to him were something nice.”

“I remember the last thing I said to him,” Colin said. “After he showed me all the things our parents taught him, I asked him, ‘What else didn’t our parents tell us about?’ ”

“What did he say in response?” Nick asked.

“Nothing,” Colin said. “He just laughed. He seemed a little sad.”

“Did he teach you Sebald Code?” April asked.

“What’s Sebald Code?”

“It’s not important,” she replied. “Just something I—”

The jeep suddenly lurched and spun, then veered off the road into a small mud puddle. The children were thrown against their seat belts. Stephano’s black suitcase crashed into Violet’s right shoulder, which was still quite sore, and she cursed loud enough to get a glare from Lilac.

Stephano gave a cry of surprise and rage. “Blasted furnaces of hell!” he shouted.

As he raged inside the jeep, the Baudelaires stepped outside, hardly believing their good luck. Another automobile had crashed headlong into the jeep, and this automobile had clearly suffered more damage. Its entire front had pleated itself together like an accordion, and one hubcap was spinning noisily on the pavement of Lousy Lane.

A familiar face peeked out the shattered window on the driver’s side.

Lilac’s jaw dropped. “ _Solitude?_ ”

Solitude gave her siblings a little wave. She was trying hard to stay cheerful, even though the image of Uncle Monty’s pale face kept flashing through her head.

“Oh, good job, Sol!” Violet said.

There was a second person in the automobile, dressed in gray and making a rough hacking sound as he opened the crumpled passenger side door and struggled his way out.

“It’s Mr. Poe!” Klaus cried.

“Baudelaires?” Mr. Poe asked. “Baudelaires? Is that you?”

“Yes, Mr. Poe,” Violet said. “It’s all of us, and we’re so grateful you ran into us like this.”

“Well, I wouldn’t say that,” Mr. Poe said. “Your sister arrived at my house at an ungodly hour, practically dragged me to my automobile, and drove all the way here without a driver’s license, breaking several laws along the way. _She’s_ the one who crashed into this jeep.”

“Boom,” Solitude said proudly.

“How dare you, you little baby!” Stephano shouted. He stomped over to where Mr. Poe was standing, but halfway there the children saw his face change from one of pure rage to one of confusion and sadness.

“I'm sorry,” he said, in a high, fluttery voice. “This whole thing is my fault. I’m so distressed by what has happened that I wasn't paying any attention to the rules of the road. I hope you're not hurt, Mr. Poe.”

“I’m not hurt,” said Mr. Poe. “I wish the same could be said for my automobile. But who are you and what are you doing with the Baudelaire children?”

“I'll tell you who he is,” Colin said. “He’s—”

“Please, Colin," Mr. Poe admonished. “It’s not polite to interrupt.”

“My name is Stephano,” Stephano said, shaking Mr. Poe’s hand. “I am—I mean I _was_ —Dr. Montgomery’s assistant.”

“What do you mean, _was_?” Mr. Poe asked sternly. “Were you fired?”

“Fire?” Sensible asked.

“No,” said Stephano. “I’m sorry to tell you there’s been a horrible accident, Mr. Poe. Dr. Montgomery is dead.”

“He's dead? That’s terrible. I’m sorry, children. Dr. Montgomery did seem like an appropriate guardian for you.”

“He was more than that,” Nick said. “He was much, much more than appropriate.”

“What happened?”

“I don't know,” Stephano said. “It looks like snakebite to me, but I don’t know anything about snakes. That's why I was going into town, to get a doctor. The children seemed too upset to be left alone.”

“He’s not taking us to get a doctor!” Nick shouted. “He’s taking us to Peru!”

“You see what I mean?” Stephano said. He tried to pat Nick’s head, but Nick swatted his hand away. “The children are obviously very distressed. Dr. Montgomery was going to take them to Peru today.”

“Yes, I heard,” Mr. Poe said. “Nicholas—”

“My name’s not Nicholas.”

“I know you’re confused and upset over this accident, but please try to understand that if Dr. Montgomery is really dead, the expedition is canceled. Clearly, a doctor needs to be called.”

“Well, why don’t you drive on up to the house,” Stephano said, “and I’ll take the children and find a doctor.”

“José!" Sunny shrieked, which probably meant, “No way!”

“Why don't we all go to the house,” Mr. Poe said, “and call for a doctor?”

Stephano blinked. “Oh. Of—of course. I should have called earlier. Obviously I’m not thinking as clearly as you. Here, children, get back in the jeep, and Mr. Poe will follow us.”

“We're not getting back in that car with you,” Colin said firmly. He adjusted his glasses, which he knew from trial and error made adults more likely to listen to him.

“Please, Colin,” Mr. Poe said. “Try to understand. There’s been a serious accident. All other discussions will have to be put aside. The only trouble is, I’m afraid my automobile’s engine is quite dead.”

“And before long,” Stephano muttered to the children, “you will be too.”

“So will you, asshole,” Nick shot back.

“I'm sorry,” Mr. Poe said. “I couldn't hear you.”

Stephano smiled. “I said, that’s too bad. Well, why don’t I take the orphans back to the house, and you walk behind us? There isn’t room for everyone.”

Colin frowned. “But we shouldn’t leave Mr. Poe’s automobile unattended. Why don’t you stay here and wait for a mechanic, and my siblings and I will walk back to the house with Mr. Poe?”

Stephano scoffed. “There’s no need for a mechanic. These automobiles fix themselves in a day or two.”

“Stephano, we’d like to walk with Mr. Poe,” said April. “Perhaps you could drive alone. The _mechanic_ —” she glanced meaningfully at Lilac— “could meet us at the house, along with any assistants she may be bringing with her.”

“Very well,” said Stephano. “But one of you the children should ride with me, so I won’t get lost.”

“You can see the house from here,” Colin pointed out. “You won’t get lost.”

It was true. He _could_ see the house from where he was standing. He could also see, out of the corner of his eye, seven of his siblings hurrying down the road toward the house while April rambled on and on about why automobiles cannot fix themselves.

“I don’t understand what the problem here is,” said Mr. Poe.

“Stephano doesn’t want us to be alone with you,” April said. “He’s afraid that we’ll tell you who he really is and what he’s really up to.”

“What's she talking about?” Mr. Poe asked Stephano.

“I have no idea,” Stephano replied, glaring at April.

April took a deep breath. Knife or no knife, she had to tell Mr. Poe who Stephano really was. “This man is not Stephano,” she said. “He’s Count Olaf, and he’s here to take us away.”

“Forgive the children,” Mr. Poe said to Stephano. “They’re very upset. Count Olaf is a terrible man who tried to steal their fortune, and the orphans are very frightened of him.”

“Stephano _is_ Count Olaf!” Colin said. “He tried to run our siblings over with a train!”

“Now,” said Mr. Poe, “where would this man get a train?”

Stephano chuckled. “Ah, don’t you miss the vivid imagination of childhood?”

“I never had one,” said Mr. Poe.

“An imagination, or a childhood?”

Mr. Poe coughed into his white handkerchief.

“Do I look like this Count Olaf?” Stephano asked.

“Yes,” said Colin. “You do. Because you’re Count Olaf.”

“No,” said Mr. Poe. “you don’t. Count Olaf had one long eyebrow and a clean-shaven face. You have a beard, and if you don't mind my saying so, no eyebrows at all.”

“He shaved his eyebrow,” April said, “and he’s wearing a fake beard. Anyone can see that.”

“And he has the tattoo!” Colin cried. “The eye tattoo on his ankle! Look at the tattoo!”

Mr. Poe looked at Stephano and shrugged apologetically. “I'm sorry to ask you this,” he said, “but the children seem so upset, and before we discuss anything further, I’d like to set their minds at ease. Would you mind showing me your ankle?”

“I'd be happy to,” Stephano said, grinning. “Right or left?”

“Left,” Colin said.

Stephano placed his left foot on the bumper of Uncle Monty’s jeep. He raised the leg of his pants, but there was no tattoo of an eye to be seen.


	14. "Those Memories Won't Ever Go Away"

The seven Baudelaires huddled in Uncle Monty’s dining room. They did not want to go into the Reptile Room, which had Uncle Monty’s dead body inside, but they needed a place to hide from Stephano, who could be back with the twins at any moment.

“Leaving April and Colin with Stephano makes me anxious,” Lilac said, worriedly looking out the window. “What if he drives off with them? He doesn’t need all of us to get our fortune.”

“The twins would never let Stephano take them both,” Violet said. “One of them, maybe. But not both.”

“That’s not comforting.”

“I’m sure they’ll be fine.”

“You’re probably right. I just don’t like splitting up.”

“Look.” Nick stood up and went to the window. “There they are, walking back already with Mr. Poe.”

The Baudelaires gathered around the window. They could see Mr. Poe and the twins trudging up Lousy Lane, the jeep close behind them.

“But what’s that gray automobile doing?” Sensible wondered. She pointed at a small gray vehicle driven by a tall man in a white coat. He parked behind the jeep and got out of his automobile.

Mr. Poe coughed. “May we—”

The tall man strode past him without speaking. He walked up to the front door and rang the doorbell six times.

In the dining room, the Baudelaires looked at each other.

“Should we let him inside?” Lilac asked.

“He looks like a doctor,” Klaus said.

“But we didn’t call for a doctor,” Violet pointed out. “This man is probably one of Stephano’s henchmen.”

“Too late,” Sensible said as Stephano unlocked the door.

Lilac quickly hid herself and her siblings behind a curtain. Violet cautiously stepped out of the dining room and into the house’s front entrance.

“Violet!”

April pulled her aside, a panicked look in her eyes.

“He doesn’t have the tattoo,” she whispered.

“What?”

“Stephano. We checked his ankle. There’s no tattoo.” She looked over her shoulder at the tall man. “And then this strange man came up to us in the driveway. He said his name was—”

“Dr. Lucafont,” the tall man said, pointing to himself with a big, solid hand. “I received a call that there’s been a terrible accident involving a snake.”

She frowned. “But there’s scarcely been time for Stephano to call, let alone for you to drive here.”

“I believe that speed is of the essence in an emergency, don’t you?” Dr. Lucafont said.

“It’s not exactly an emergency,” April said. “Uncle Monty’s already dead.”

“Little girl, if an autopsy is to be performed, it should be done immediately.”

“I’m not a _little girl_.”

Dr. Lucafont walked further into the house. “Where is the body?”

“Stephano can tell you,” Mr. Poe said. “Stephano?”

Stephano strode into the entryway, holding a coffee pot. “I’m going to make some coffee,” he said. “Who wants some?”

“I’ll have a cup,” Dr. Lucafont said. “With two sugars. Nothing like a hearty cup of coffee before starting the day’s work.”

Stephano growled. “You fool, you know we haven’t got any sugar!”

Mr. Poe frowned. “Dr. Lucafont, shouldn’t you take a look at Dr. Montgomery first? Time is of the essence in an emergency.”

“Yes, yes, I suppose you’re right,” Dr. Lucafont said reluctantly.

“Poor Dr. Montgomery is in the Reptile Room,” Stephano said, gesturing to the elaborate door. “Please do a thorough examination, and _then_ you may have some coffee.”

“You’re the boss,” Dr. Lucafont said, opening the door of the Reptile Room with an oddly stiff hand.

Stephano led Mr. Poe into the kitchen, and the three Baudelaires followed. Violet stole a glance at the dining room, and Stephano looked at her curiously.

“I could have sworn there were more of you. Where are the rest of your siblings?”

The three Baudelaires all responded at the same time.

“We don’t know,” Violet said.

“Behind you,” Colin said.

“They’ve left the country,” April said.

Stephano raised his one eyebrow. Then he turned to Mr. Poe.

“When I spoke to Dr. Lucafont on the telephone,” Stephano said, “I told him about the accident with your automobile. When he is done with his medical examination, he will drive you into town to get a mechanic, and I will stay here with the orphans.”

“No,” Colin said immediately. “We are _not_ staying alone with him for an instant.”

Mr. Poe looked sternly at Colin. “I realize you’re very upset, but it’s inexcusable for you to keep treating Stephano so rudely. Please apologize to him at once.”

“That's quite all right, Mr. Poe,” Stephano said, smiling. “The children are upset over Dr. Montgomery’s murder, so I don’t expect them to be on their best behavior.”

“Murder?” Violet said curiously. “Why did you say _murder_ , Stephano?”

Stephano’s smile disappeared. He glared at Violet.

“I misspoke.”

“Of course you did.”

She marched into the dining room, leaving April and Colin to deal with Stephano. The three of them stared at each other for a long moment.

Finally, Colin adjusted his glasses. “I’d feel more comfortable if we took Dr. Lucafont’s automobile with Mr. Poe.”

“I’m not sure you’ll fit,” Stephano said. “After all, there are nine of you, and it’s a very small automobile. But if you orphans would rather, you could come with me in the jeep and we could follow Mr. Poe and Dr. Lucafont to the mechanic.”

“Why don’t we ride with Dr. Lucafont,” April said, “and Mr. Poe can ride with Stephano?”

“Whatever for?” Mr. Poe asked.

“I’ve always wanted to see the inside of a doctor’s automobile,” April replied.

Colin looked at her strangely. “You have?”

“Of course. Doctors’ automobiles are fascinating.” She nudged him in the side. “Don’t you agree?”

“Oh yes,” Colin said, catching on. "I find doctors’ automobiles captivating. Please, can’t we ride with Dr. Lucafont?”

“I’m afraid not,” Stephano said. “Not all nine of you children, anyway. Once Dr. Montgomery’s body is in Dr. Lucafont’s car, there will only be room for three more passengers.”

“Six,” April corrected. “The babies can sit on our laps.”

“I don’t believe that’s legal,” Mr. Poe said. “Babies are required by law to sit in car seats.”

“We’ll be human car seats,” Colin said, “which are actually more effective than regular ones.”

“How so?”

“Well, we can move and adjust ourselves in response to any perceived dangers on the road.”

“And,” April added, holding up her hands like she was carrying a pizza, “we have built-in cup holders.”

“Oh, cup holders would be so convenient,” Dr. Lucafont said, emerging from the Reptile Room. “Is there any coffee left for me?”

“Have you completed your examination already?” Mr. Poe asked.

“The preliminary one, yes,” Dr. Lucafont said. “I will have to take the body for some further tests, but my autopsy shows that the doctor died of snakebite.”

“How can you be sure?” April asked the doctor.

“In his veins, I found the venom of the Mamba du Mal, one of the world's most poisonous snakes,” Dr. Lucafont said.

“Does this mean that there’s a poisonous snake loose in this house?” Mr. Poe asked.

“No, no,” Dr. Lucafont said hurriedly. “The Mamba du Mal is safe in its cage. It must have gotten out, bitten Dr. Montgomery, and locked itself up again.”

“That’s a ridiculous theory,” said Colin. “A snake cannot operate a lock by itself.”

“Perhaps other snakes helped it,” Dr. Lucafont said calmly. “Is there anything here to eat? I had to rush over here without my breakfast.”

He went to the kitchen and started rooting through the pantry. Lilac peeked out from behind the curtain to watch him.

“While Dr. Lucafont is distracted, let’s go to the Reptile Room,” she whispered to her siblings. “We need to find out what really happened to Uncle Monty. Sensible, stay here and make sure Dr. Lucafont doesn’t leave the kitchen.”

Quietly, the seven Baudelaires tiptoed out of the dining room, through the kitchen behind Dr. Lucafont’s unsuspecting back, and into the Reptile Room. Sensible stayed behind, watching the doctor search through bags and cans of food. He picked out a can of peaches and began walking toward the doorway that led to the Reptile Room.

Sensible had to stop him. She thought about using her matches, but decided it was too dangerous. She couldn’t play cards with him; the same trick wouldn’t work twice. She didn’t know what to do, so she just screeched—a high, piercing noise.

Dr. Lucafont stopped in his tracks and stared at her.

“What on earth—”

“That’s Uncle Monty’s food!” she cried out, her little face contorted in fury. “Stop eating his food!”

“I was only going to have a few peaches,” he said, a little guiltily.

Letting out a battle cry, she ran straight at him, knocking the can of peaches from his oddly stiff hands. He jumped back in surprise.

She carefully placed the can of peaches on the ground near an uneven spot in the floorboards. Then she stood up, placing herself between Dr. Lucafont and the peaches.

“Don’t you _dare_.”

Dr. Lucafont suddenly gasped. He stared and pointed at something behind Sensible. She turned around. The peaches were gone, as if they had been swallowed up by some underground monster.

She heard a latch click into place, but she couldn’t tell where the sound was coming from.

* * *

“I don’t want to go in,” Klaus said, standing in front of the Reptile Room. “Uncle Monty died in here.”

“I know we don’t want to be here,” Lilac said, “but we have work to do.”

“Work?” Nick asked. “What work?”

“We have work to do,” said Violet, “that Mr. Poe _should_ be doing, but as usual, he’s well-intentioned but of no real help. Mr. Poe doesn’t believe that Stephano and Count Olaf are the same person, and he believes that Uncle Monty’s death was an accident. We have to prove him wrong on both counts.”

“Notat,” Sunny said, which probably meant, “But Stephano doesn’t have the tattoo.”

“Tocksin,” Solitude added, which probably meant, “And Dr. Lucafont found the venom of the Mamba du Mal in Uncle Monty’s veins.”

“But the nine of us know the truth,” Lilac said. “And in order to convince the adults, we have to find evidence and proof of Stephano’s plan.”

“If only we’d found evidence and proof earlier,” Klaus said quietly. “Then maybe we could have saved Uncle Monty’s life.”

“We’ll never know about that,” Violet said. “But if we put Stephano behind bars for murder, we’ll at least be able to prevent him from harming anyone else.”

“Including us,” Nick pointed out.

Violet nodded. She turned the doorknob and pushed the door open. “In you go.”

“What should we do?” Klaus asked.

“Nick, Klaus, find all of Uncle Monty’s books that might contain information about the Mamba du Mal,” Violet said.

“But all that research could take days!” Nick protested.

“Well, we don’t have days,” Violet said. “We don’t even have hours, so I suggest you get a move on.”

“All right, all right,” Nick said. “Let’s get started. Klaus, you take this book.”

He tossed a heavy volume at Klaus, just barely missing his head.

Violet turned her attention to Solitude and Sunny. “Sunny, watch the door and bite anyone who tries to get in. Solitude, find the Mamba du Mal and make sure it’s accounted for. Try to see if its fangs match up to the bite marks on Uncle Monty.”

“Ackroid!” said Sunny, who was already crawling toward the door.

Solitude looked up at Lilac, trembling a little.

“Scared,” she whimpered, which probably meant, “I don’t like seeing Uncle Monty like this, all pale and still.”

“I know, Sol,” said Lilac. “But think about all the good memories you had with Uncle Monty. He might be gone, but those memories won’t ever go away. Can you do that?”

Solitude nodded. Lilac gave her a big hug, then sent her off in the direction of the reptile terrariums.

“What will you two do?” Nick asked his older sisters.

“While you’re in the library, we’re going up to Stephano’s room to see if we can find any clues,” Violet answered.

Lilac blinked. “Alone? In his room?”

“It'll be perfectly safe,” Violet said. “Let’s go.”

They closed the door of the Reptile Room and hurried upstairs, checking over their shoulders to make sure the twins still had the adults distracted.

“But Mr. Poe, if Stephano rides with us in Dr. Lucafont’s automobile, and you drive Dr. Montgomery’s jeep,” Colin was saying, “then how will you know the way?”

“I see your point,” Mr. Poe said. “But if you children take the jeep, three of you will have to sit on Dr. Montgomery’s lap. We’ll have to work out another way.”

“What if we put Uncle Monty in the jeep?” said April. “Then there will be room for all nine of us in Dr. Lucafont’s automobile.”

“Should we steal April away?” Violet whispered to Lilac. “She might be helpful.”

Lilac thought for a moment, surprised that Violet had asked for her advice. “No,” she decided. “Stephano would notice. It would be too suspicious.”

At that very moment, Stephano looked up toward the staircase. He locked eyes with Violet and Lilac. For a few tense seconds, all three of them froze. Then Lilac grabbed Violet’s hand, and the two of them raced the rest of the way up the stairs and disappeared down the hall.

And so the nine Baudelaires were scattered throughout the house like pieces in a board game—Violet and Lilac upstairs in Stephano’s room, April and Colin arguing with Stephano and Mr. Poe in the entryway, Nick and Klaus researching snakes in the Reptile Room, Sensible confronting Dr. Lucafont in the kitchen, Solitude luring the Mamba du Mal out of its cage with a chunk of raw meat, and Sunny guarding the door with her teeth at the ready. The Baudelaire orphans worked furiously, each desperate to solve the mystery of Uncle Monty’s murder before it was too late.


	15. "This Is Like Finding A Needle In A Haystack"

Nick and Klaus researched furiously, trying to find any information about the Mamba du Mal that might help them prove Stephano’s guilt. They turned page after page, knowing that every second they spent reading brought them a second closer to five o’clock, when Stephano would force the children aboard the _Prospero_ and take them to Peru.

Solitude tottered into Uncle Monty’s library, the Mamba du Mal coiled around her arm.

“Find anything?” Klaus asked her.

“Cantell,” she said, which probably meant, “It’s impossible to determine if the Mamba du Mal’s fangs match the bite marks on Uncle Monty’s face.”

“I figured. What about you, Nick?”

“Not much,” Nick said, squinting at a block of text. “Do you think you can make sense of this? It has lots of complicated words and the lines are so close together I can barely understand a thing.”

“Try reading it out loud.”

“ ‘The Mamba du Mal,’ ” Nick read, “ ‘is one of the deadliest snakes in the hemisphere, noted for its strangulatory grip, used in conjunction with its deadly venom, giving all of its victims a tenebrous hue, which is ghastly to behold.’ ”

He looked up. “Strangulatory? Conjunction? Tenebrous? I have no idea what this book is talking about.”

“Well, ‘strangulatory’ means ‘having to do with strangling.’ ”

Nick sighed. “Okay, I knew _that_.”

“ ‘In conjunction’ means ‘together,’ ” Klaus went on, “and ‘tenebrous’ means ‘dark.’ So the Mamba du Mal is noted for strangling people while it bites them, leaving their corpses dark with bruises.”

“Stop! Stop!” Solitude cried, which probably meant, “I don’t want to hear any more about what happened to Uncle Monty!”

“Wait,” said Nick, realization dawning on his face. “But this _isn’t_ what happened to Uncle Monty.”

“I don’t understand,” said Klaus. “Dr. Lucafont said there was the venom of the Mamba du Mal in Uncle Monty’s veins.”

“Fib,” Solitude said, which probably meant, “Dr. Lucafont must be working with Stephano. Of course he would say something like that.”

Nick thought for a moment. “Maybe there _was_ venom in Uncle Monty’s veins,” he said, “but the snake didn’t put it there. If it had, Uncle Monty’s body would have been dark with bruises. But you and I remember that it was as pale as can be.”

“That's true,” Klaus said. “But then how was he poisoned?”

“Remember how Uncle Monty said he kept the venoms of all his poisonous snakes in test tubes to study them?” Nick replied. “I think Stephano took the venom and injected it into Uncle Monty.”

“Horrific!” Solitude shrieked, which probably meant, “That’s awful!”

“When we tell Mr. Poe about this,” said Nick, “Stephano will be arrested for Uncle Monty’s murder and sent to jail.”

They heard a knock at the door. Sunny opened the door, and Mr. Poe entered the Reptile Room, followed by April and Colin. Sunny bit each of them gently on the hand.

“I hope you’re feeling a bit calmer and no longer entertaining the thought that Stephano is Count Olaf,” said Mr. Poe.

Klaus frowned. “But he _is_ —”

“Shut up,” Nick whispered. Klaus ignored him.

“He _is_ Count Olaf,” he said. “And he may be responsible for Uncle Monty's death.”

“Nonsense!” Mr. Poe exclaimed. "Dr. Montgomery’s death was a terrible accident and nothing more.”

Klaus held up the book he was reading. “But while you were in the kitchen, we were reading about snakes, and—”

“Reading about snakes?” Mr. Poe said in surprise. “I should think you’d want to read about anything _but_ snakes, after what happened to Dr. Montgomery.”

“But we found out something—”

“It doesn't matter what you found out about snakes,” Mr. Poe interrupted, taking out a handkerchief and coughing into it. “Stephano doesn’t know anything about snakes. He told us that himself.”

“He’s the assistant to a _herpetologist_!”

“Well, I don’t know about mouth sores,” said Mr. Poe. “But although we’ve settled that matter, there is still the issue of transportation. I know that you children were eager to see the inside of a doctor’s automobile, but I’ve discussed it with Colin and Lilac—”

“April,” April corrected.

“—over and over and there’s simply no way it can work. You nine are going to ride in the jeep with Stephano into town, while I will ride with Dr. Lucafont and your Uncle Monty. Gather your sisters. A group of men will be coming soon to take Dr. Montgomery’s reptile collection.”

“Away?” Solitude said, which probably meant, “The reptiles are going to be taken away forever, like Uncle Monty?”

“There’s simply nothing that can be done. We’re leaving in a few minutes. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to make a phone call.”

Mr. Poe coughed once more into his handkerchief and left the room.

Nick looked at Colin. “Is it true? Are we really leaving with Stephano?”

“We’re sorry,” Colin said. “We really tried. We just couldn’t make it work.”

“Where are the rest of you?” April asked.

“Sensible is in the kitchen, guarding a can of peaches,” said Nick. “Violet and Lilac are upstairs.”

“What are they doing?”

“I don’t know. Making some kind of invention.”

“I should go help them,” said April. “I wonder what they’re doing up there.”

* * *

Violet and Lilac stood in front of Stephano’s door, hearts pounding in unison. Violet reached for the brass doorknob. Then she stopped, her left hand just a few inches away from the doorknob.

“What’s the problem?” Lilac asked.

“This feels wrong.”

“It’s not wrong to intrude,” Lilac said, “if we’re doing it to bring a murderer to justice.”

“That’s not what feels wrong,” Violet said. “It’s that just a few weeks ago I was so frightened of walking into Count Olaf’s bedroom and now, here we are.”

She looked down at her shoes. “I still am,” she said quietly. “Frightened. I’m terribly afraid, L.”

That simple confession made Lilac even more afraid than she already was. It is one thing to believe that an intelligent, resourceful person older than you can solve any problem in the world. It is another thing entirely for that same intelligent, resourceful person to admit that she is too frightened to open a door.

Lilac reached over, turned the knob, and opened the door.

“It’s amazing,” she said, “how everything having to do with Count Olaf is so frightening.”

As the two oldest Baudelaires stepped inside, they saw that the room was a dirty mess. The bed was unmade and had cracker crumbs all over it. As expected, empty wine bottles were strewn over almost every surface. The curtains were encrusted in a yellowish-white substance that Violet and Lilac sincerely hoped was not dried-up snot.

“This is horrendous,” said Violet. “There’s nothing helpful in here at all.”

“There’s always something,” said Lilac.

“That’s a lovely mantra, L., but I’m quite certain that this time, there is literally nothing of value here. Let’s go back to the Reptile Room. Maybe Nick and Klaus have found something useful.”

“And _I’m_ quite certain that there’s something in this room that we can use,” Lilac replied, a slight edge to her voice. She started opening Stephano’s dresser drawers and rummaging through piles of stained clothing.

“I bet Stephano is hiding something in his suitcase,” she said. “He’s going to want to take whatever weapon he used to murder Uncle Monty out of the country, so it can’t be traced.”

“Stephano’s suitcase is in the jeep,” Violet pointed out, “and the jeep is outside.”

Lilac shut the drawer. “We need something heavy that can break the lock.”

“Or a lockpick.”

“Oh. Yes. Right. A lockpick.”

“You don’t know how to make a lockpick, do you?”

“Of course I know how to make a lockpick!”

Violet huffed in frustration. “If you knew how to make a lockpick, you would know that you need small strips of metal to make one, and if you haven’t noticed, there are no small strips of metal in this room!”

“We’ll find some.”

“We could spend hours poking around in this room,” said Violet, “or we could go back down to the Reptile Room, where I know for a fact that Uncle Monty keeps all sorts of inventing materials and Klaus keeps a very useful—”

“But Stephano will see us if we go back down the staircase. We can’t risk it!” Lilac angrily grabbed one of the wine bottles. “Let’s not use a lockpick at all. We’ll blow the suitcase open with a Molotov cocktail.”

“And destroy all the evidence inside? Do you even _hear_ what you’re saying?”

“We’ll find another way. There’s always—”

“There _is_ another way,” Violet said, her eyes blazing. “I’m going to the Reptile Room to get the skeleton key from Klaus, and _I’ll_ sneak outside to find Uncle Monty’s suitcase.”

“Well, I’m not going with you,” said Lilac. “I’ll stay here and find something _I_ can use.”

“You’re wasting your time,” Violet said, opening the door. “You could be letting a murderer go free.”

And with that, Violet left.

Lilac turned her attention back to Stephano’s room. She surveyed the room for anything she could possibly use to build a lockpick. She had never used a lockpick before, and inventing wasn’t her strong point, but she had seen Violet make one from a paperclip, and how hard could it be? All she needed were a few small strips of metal.

“Come on, Lilac,” she said to herself as she braided her hair.

Her eyes traveled from the empty wine bottles, to the dirty curtains, to the lamp on Stephano’s desk and the wire that plugged the lamp into an electric socket on the wall.

Lilac knew that it was dangerous to handle electric objects like a plug. Four years ago, while her mother had been pregnant with Sensible, Violet had spent days building a light-up mobile to hang over the new baby’s cradle. Lilac had wanted to add a motor to the top of the mobile so it would spin, but Violet had refused to let her near the invention.

So one night, Lilac had snuck into Violet’s inventing studio to fix up the mobile herself. But she hadn’t known that, without the proper insulation, metal wires were quick and effective conductors of electricity. When she had touched the lit-up, half-finished mobile, fire had streaked across her wrist and down her arm.

Hearing her cry, her father had raced to the inventing studio to find Lilac standing next to the mobile, cradling her burned arm. He had grabbed her by the shoulders.

“What did you do?” he had asked, anger and worry in his eyes.

“I wanted to work on the mobile,” she had said. “Like Violet.”

“What is your name?”

“Lilac.”

“L., is your name Violet?”

She had pushed him away. “I hate it when you call me L.!”

He had repeated the question, almost shouting. “Is your name Violet E. Baudelaire?”

“No!” she had sobbed.

“That’s right,” he had said. “You should never, ever, _ever_ fiddle around in any way with electric devices, because you are _not_ Violet Baudelaire, one of the few people in the world who knows how to handle such things. It’s very dangerous. Do you understand?”

She had nodded. “Yes, I understand.”

“Do you promise never to mess around with electricity again, unless your mother or I am right there with you?”

“Yes, Father.”

Lilac never attempted any sort of electric invention after that night. She stood in front of the socket, remembering the terrible pain that had shot through her arm. But that had been four years ago. She wasn’t ten years old anymore. She was older now, she thought, and more careful.

“Sorry, Father,” she whispered.

She unplugged the lamp and took a long look at the plug. She wiggled the two prongs of the plug this way and that until they came loose from their plastic casing. She prodded and bent the two pieces of metal until one was hooked around the other. Then, she took a sharp, thin object from her pocket—the same object that had frightened Stephano—and forced it between the two pieces of metal so the sharp end stuck straight out.

It looked very different from the lockpick that Lilac had seen Violet make, but she hoped it was good enough.

* * *

Violet tiptoed down the stairs, making sure Stephano couldn’t see her. Carefully, she opened the door to the Reptile Room and slipped inside. Then she let out a gasp of pain.

“Ow!”

She held up her hand, which had bright red teeth marks on it. Sunny looked up at her guiltily.

“Mianhae,” she said, which probably meant, “Sorry, but you told me to bite anyone who tries to come inside.”

“Did something happen?” April asked. “I thought you were inventing with Lilac.”

“I thought I was too,” Violet said. “Klaus, I need your skeleton key.”

He dug the white key out of his coat pocket and handed it to her. “What for?”

“When the adults come to fetch us,” she said, ignoring Klaus’s question, “keep them in the Reptile Room until I get back.”

“Absolutely not,” said April. “I’m going with you.”

Surprisingly, Violet didn’t argue. “Fine, as long as you come with me and not Lilac.”

“Did something happen?”

“It’s not a big deal.”

“But how will we keep the adults in the Reptile Room?” Colin asked.

“Create a distraction,” Violet answered.

“You mean I could have been making a distraction this whole time instead of reading about snakes?” Nick said. “You could have told me earlier! ‘Distraction’ is my middle name.”

“No, Nick,” said Klaus. “Your middle name is Liam.”

“What distraction?” Colin asked. “How?”

“For goodness’ sake,” Violet replied impatiently. “Between the three of you, you’ve read hundreds of books. Surely you must have read something about creating a distraction.”

“In order to win the Trojan War,” Nick said, “the ancient Greeks hid soldiers inside an enormous wooden horse.”

“But I don’t have time to build a wooden horse!” April said.

“Then you’ll have to think of something else,” Violet said, and she walked out the door with April and without another word.

“What do we do?” Klaus asked.

“I have an idea,” said Nick. “Sol, get the Incredibly Deadly Viper.”

“Ink!” she shouted. The viper slithered across the rug and coiled itself loosely around her little body.

“Now,” Nick told her, “scream like you did when you found Uncle Monty.”

She shook her head. “Dontwanna.”

He groaned. “Come _on_!”

“Dontwanna,” she repeated stubbornly.

“Think of something scary,” Klaus said. “Like the basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets.”

“Plithiver,” she said, which probably meant, “But the basilisk isn’t scary, he’s just misunderstood.”

“We need something scarier,” said Colin. “How about climate change?”

Solitude opened her mouth and wailed.

From the kitchen, Sensible heard her younger sister’s scream. She gasped.

“It’s Solitude!” she shouted. “Something is terribly wrong!”

“My Lord!” Mr. Poe hung up. He and Dr. Lucafont ran past Sensible and out of the kitchen to see what the matter was. She followed close behind.

“What’s the matter?” Mr. Poe asked Stephano. “I heard some screams coming from the Reptile Room.”

“I’m sure it’s nothing,” Stephano said. “You know how children are.”

“We can't have another tragedy on our hands,” Mr. Poe said, and he rushed to the enormous door of the Reptile Room. “Children! Children!”

“In here!” Nick cried. “Come quickly!”

Colin threw open the door, and the adults rushed inside.

Solitude was lying down on the floor, her arms and legs waving wildly. Wrapped around her was a black snake with shiny green eyes, and its mouth was open as if it were about to bite her.

“The Incredibly Deadly Viper!” Nick shouted. “It's going to bite her!”

“Goodness!” Mr. Poe cried. “Golly! Good God! Blessed Allah! Zeus and Hera! Mary and Joseph! Nathaniel Hawthorne! Don't touch her! Grab her! Move closer! Run away! Don't move! Kill the snake! Leave it alone! Don’t let it bite her! Lure the snake away! What can we do?”

“We have to give it some food. But it only eats bankers at this time of day!” Nick said, clearly enjoying himself way too much.

The Incredibly Deadly Viper leaned over and bit Solitude on the nose. Mr. Poe gasped in horror.

“It's bitten her!” he shouted. “It bit her! It bited her! Calm down! Get moving! Call an ambulance! Call the police! Call a scientist! Call my wife! This is terrible! This is awful! This is ghastly! This is phantasmagorical! This is—”

“This is nothing to worry about,” Stephano interrupted calmly.

“What do you mean, nothing to worry about?” Mr. Poe asked. “Sunny was just bitten by—what's the name of the snake, Klaus?”

“The Incredibly Deadly Viper,” Klaus answered.

“The Incredibly Deadly Viper!” Mr. Poe repeated. “How can you say it’s nothing to worry about?”

“Because the Incredibly Deadly Viper is completely harmless,” Stephano said. “Calm yourself, Mr. Poe. The snake’s name is a misnomer that Dr. Montgomery created for his own amusement.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I'm sure,” Stephano said. “The snake is perfectly harmless—friendly, even. I read up on the Incredibly Deadly Viper in the library section of the Reptile Room, as well as in Dr. Montgomery’s private papers. In fact, I studied books on all the major species. I looked carefully at sketches and charts. I took careful notes and looked them over each night before I went to sleep. If I may say so, I consider myself to be quite the expert on snakes.”

“Aha!” Solitude shrieked, disentangling herself from the Incredibly Deadly Viper.

Mr. Poe looked at Klaus, puzzled. “What does your sister mean by ‘Aha?’ ”

“She means,” he said, finally triumphant to reveal all that he knew, “that one minute Stephano claims he knows nothing about snakes, and the next he claims he’s an expert. Stephano has been lying to us, and we’ve finally exposed his dishonesty to you.”

The word “Aha!” can mean many things, and what Klaus told Mr. Poe was one of such things, but when she said the word “Aha,” Solitude had actually meant something quite different. She had meant, “Even though Uncle Monty is dead, I know how to save the Incredibly Deadly Viper.”

She tottered over to Sunny, who was hanging onto a statue of a snake with her teeth. Solitude wrapped the Incredibly Deadly Viper around Sunny’s neck.

“Shrek,” she said, which probably meant, “Take Ink to the swamp.”

* * *

Violet walked into Nick’s bedroom, April close behind. She knelt down and reached to push open the small door that led outside—only to realize it was already open.

“Lilac,” she murmured to herself.

“Sorry, but what’s going on?” said April, kneeling down beside her sister.

Violet didn’t answer. She crawled through the door.

They emerged outside, among Uncle Monty’s carefully trimmed snake hedges. Quickly and quietly, they walked to Uncle Monty’s jeep, which was still parked in the driveway. The trunk was already open. Lilac was sitting on the ground, Stephano’s black suitcase in her lap. She was futilely trying to pry open the silver padlock.

“For God’s sake,” Violet groaned. She walked over and snatched the suitcase away.

“I had it under control!” Lilac snapped, holding up a crude lockpick that had been snapped in two.

“No, you didn’t.”

Violet stuck the skeleton key into the keyhole. It went inside, but when she tried to turn it around, it scarcely budged. She pulled it out and tried again. And again.

“It’s not working!”

Lilac sighed. “You’ve never used a skeleton key, have you?”

“Of course I’ve used a skeleton key!”

“Give me that.” She grabbed the skeleton key and looked at it closely. “April, go back to the house and get a bar of soap.”

April ran back the way they had come. Violet watched her go. Then her eyes traveled to the glass walls of the Reptile Room, where Mr. Poe was panicking over Solitude being bitten by the Incredibly Deadly Viper. As she watched, Stephano turned his head ever so slightly, and looked right back at her.

“Here!”

April flung a bar of soap at Lilac, who barely managed to catch the slippery substance. She rubbed it over the skeleton key to make a thin, slick coating. She stuck the skeleton key back into the keyhole of the padlock and turned it. The lock clicked open.

All three girls breathed a sigh of relief.

Violet pulled the suitcase open, spilling everything on the ground: a glass vial with a sealed rubber cap, a syringe with a sharp needle, a card laminated in plastic, a powder puff, and a small hand mirror. She stared at the items in dismay.

“This is like finding a needle in a haystack.”

“More like finding _anything_ in a haystack,” Lilac agreed.

“No, I—I think I figured it out,” April said. She uncapped the glass vial and attached it to the end of the syringe. “It fits.”


	16. "There's Someone Watching Over Us"

Sunny crawled through the underbrush behind Uncle Monty’s house, the Incredibly Deadly Viper wrapped around her neck like a shiny black scarf. Finally, she emerged through a wall of ferns, finding herself at the edge of a murky brown swamp. It made a sinister noise that Sunny didn’t like.

She carefully uncoiled the Incredibly Deadly Viper and set it down in the long grass.

“Go!” she shouted. “Be free!”

But the Incredibly Deadly Viper didn’t go. It curled itself around Sunny’s ankles affectionately, refusing to let go. She tried to pull the viper off, but it wouldn’t budge.

“Agah!” she shrieked, which probably meant, “This is for your own good, you stupid snake!”

Suddenly, a great roar shook the grassy clearing. A battered yellow taxi tore through the wall of ferns, weaving this way and that. It stopped at the muddy edge of the swamp. Sunny stared.

“Deus,” she whispered in wonder, which probably meant, “I can’t believe those taxi-driving librarians have returned, and I can’t believe they drove through shrubbery just to get the Incredibly Deadly Viper.”

But a woman, not the taxi-driving librarians, climbed out of the driver’s seat. Her hair was tied up in a bun that had two pencils sticking out of it at odd angles, and her eyes looked exhausted beneath her gold-rimmed spectacles.

“Are you one of the Baudelaire children?” she asked.

Sunny nodded. “Sunny.”

“Your Uncle Monty told me there would be trouble.” The woman looked around. “Where are the other reptiles?”

“Atascado,” Sunny said, which probably meant, “Stuck in the Reptile Room, under the watch of a bearded assistant with a dubious degree in herpetology. The Incredibly Deadly Viper is the only one were only able to sneak out.”

The woman held out her arm. Surprisingly, the snake uncoiled itself and curled around her wrist. She stroked its shiny scales.

“What’s its name?”

“Ink,” said Sunny.

“Well, Ink,” the woman said, “you’re coming with me.”

“Denouement?” Sunny asked, which probably meant, “Are you taking Ink to a safe place?”

“The very safest.”

The woman looked at the viper on her arm, then looked at Sunny. Then, without warning, her eyes filled with tears. She knelt down, looking into Sunny’s eyes.

“You’re a very brave girl, Sunny,” she said. “I hope my baby grows up to be half as brave as you.”

“Baby?”

She put a hand on her belly. “She’s not due for a while, but would you like to see her?”

The woman got up. She opened the glove compartment of the taxi and started searching for something inside it.

“My first ultrasound was done a little while ago. I can show you a picture, if you’d—”

Sunny patted the woman’s boot. “Neindanke,” she said, which probably meant, “No, thank you.”

“Are you sure?” the woman said, looking down at Sunny. “This is what your parents would have wanted, you know.”

“Propagan,” Sunny replied, which probably meant, “Actually, I don’t think it is.”

“Well, if that’s what you choose,” the woman said reluctantly. She climbed back into the driver’s seat. “At least let me drive you back to Monty’s house.”

“Lodestone,” Sunny said, which probably meant, “I’ll find my way back on my own.”

“Well. If you ever change your mind, I’ll be back.”

The woman nodded once, wiped her eyes, and closed the door. The taxi sped off through the grass, narrowly missing several small birds and a very frightened dormouse.

Sunny watched the taxi drive away into the underbrush. Years later, she often wondered what would have happened if she had looked at the photograph of the woman’s baby, and gotten into her taxi with the Incredibly Deadly Viper that night. She would have had a curious childhood with an unusual education, and the woman with gold-rimmed glasses would not have had to keep her promise and come back for Sunny Baudelaire. And if she had not kept her promise, she might have survived.

Sunny began to crawl back in the direction of Uncle Monty’s house.

* * *

“Stephano, explain yourself.” Mr. Poe said. “You have just told us that you are an expert on snakes. Previously, however, you told us you knew nothing of snakes, and therefore couldn’t have been involved in Dr. Montgomery’s death. What’s going on?”

“I was being modest,” said Stephano.

“You weren’t being modest!” Klaus cried. “You were lying! And you’re lying now! You’re nothing but a liar and murderer!”

“You have no evidence of that,” Stephano said angrily.

“Yes, we do,” a voice said from the doorway.

The three oldest Baudelaires stood in the doorway, Sunny just a few steps behind. April walked across the Reptile Room, carrying Stephano’s black suitcase. She arranged the objects in a line on top of a table: the glass vial, the syringe, the laminated card, the powder puff, and the mirror.

“What is all this?” Stephano spluttered.

“This is evidence,” April said, “which we found in Stephano’s suitcase.”

“My suitcase,” Stephano said, “is private property, which you are not allowed to touch. It’s very rude of you, and besides, it was locked.”

“It was an emergency,” she said, “so we—”

“Picked the lock?” Mr. Poe finished in alarm. “Lilac, nice girls shouldn't know how to do such things.”

“I’m April,” April corrected.

“My sister _is_ a nice girl,” Colin said, “and she knows how to do all sorts of things.”

“And I didn’t pick the lock anyway,” April went on. “Violet used a skeleton key to open the suitcase.”

Stephano started in surprise. “Where did you get a skeleton key?”

“When Uncle Monty died, my siblings and I were very sad, but we were also very suspicious,” April said.

“We weren't suspicious!” Klaus exclaimed. “If someone is suspicious, it means they’re not sure. We were _positive_ that Stephano killed him.”

“Nonsense!” Dr. Lucafont said. “As I explained to all of you, Dr. Montgomery’s death was an accident. The Mamba du Mal escaped from its cage and bit him, and that’s all there is to it.”

“I beg your pardon,” Nick said, “but that is _not_ all there is to it. Klaus and I read up on the Mamba du Mal, and found out how it kills its victims.”

He walked over to the stack of books and opened the one on top. “ ‘The Mamba du Mal,’ ” he read aloud, “ ‘is one of the deadliest snakes in the hemisphere, noted for its strangulatory grip, used in conjunction with its deadly venom, giving all of its victims a tenebrous hue, which is ghastly to behold.’ ”

He put the book down. “The Mamba du Mal did not kill Uncle Monty. His body didn’t have a tenebrous hue. It was as pale as could be.”

“Perhaps, just this once, the snake didn't feel like bruising its victim,” Dr. Lucafont said.

“It’s more likely that Uncle Monty was killed with these items,” April said. She held up the glass vial. “This vial is labeled ‘Venom du Mal,’ and it's obviously from Uncle Monty’s cabinet of venom samples.”

She held up the syringe. “Stephano took this syringe and injected the venom into Uncle Monty. Then he poked an extra hole so it would look like the snake had bitten him.”

“When I turn eighteen, as we all know,” Violet said, “I will inherit the Baudelaire fortune, and Stephano intended to get that fortune for himself. It would be easier to do so if we were in a location that was more difficult to trace, such as Peru.”

“But Uncle Monty tore up Stephano’s ticket to Peru,” April said. “That’s why he had to get Uncle Monty out of the way. He killed Uncle Monty—”

She stopped suddenly, her voice catching. She glanced at the chair where they had found Uncle Monty’s body.

“He killed Uncle Monty,” Lilac continued, “and took his card.”

She held up the laminated card. “It’s Monty’s membership card for the Herpetological Society. Stephano planned to pose as Uncle Monty to get on board the _Prospero_ and whisk us away to Peru.”

“But I don’t understand,” Mr. Poe said. “How did Stephano even know about your fortune?”

“Because he’s really Count Olaf,” April said, exasperated. “He may have shaved his head and his eyebrows, but the only way he could get rid of the tattoo on his left ankle was with this powder puff and hand mirror. There’s makeup all over his left ankle to hide the eye. I’ll bet if we rub it with a cloth, we can see the tattoo.”

“That's absurd!” Stephano cried.

“We'll see about that,” Mr. Poe replied.

He reached into his pocket and withdrew his handkerchief. “Your left ankle, please,” he said to Stephano.

“But you’ve been coughing into that all day!” Stephano said. “It has germs!”

If you’re really who the children say you are,” Mr. Poe said, “then germs are the least of your problems. Your left ankle, please.”

Stephano growled and pulled his pants leg up to reveal his ankle. Mr. Poe knelt down and rubbed at it for a few seconds until the outline of an eye began to appear.

“That’s the eye, all right,” Mr. Poe said. “You are most definitely Count Olaf, and you are most definitely under arrest.”

“Again,” Nick whispered, “I really don’t think he’s allowed to arrest people.”

“Baudelaires,” said Mr. Poe, “please forgive me for not believing you earlier. It just seemed too far-fetched that Count Olaf would have searched you out, disguised himself as a laboratory assistant, and concocted an elaborate plan to steal your fortune.”

“Prako,” Solitude said, which probably meant, “You’re a disgrace to your profession.”

“I wonder what happened to Gustav, Uncle Monty’s _real_ lab assistant?” Klaus wondered. “If Gustav hadn’t quit, then Uncle Monty never would have hired Count Olaf.”

“Gustav didn't quit,” Nick said. “He died. Lilac and I found him in the Swarthy Swamp, next to a poison dart.”

“That’s right,” said Count Olaf, a murderous look on his face. “I killed Gustav. But that’s small potatoes compared to what I’ll do to you, orphans. You’ve won this round of the game, but I _will_ return for your fortune, and for your precious skin.”

“This is not a game, you horrible man,” Mr. Poe said. “Dominos is a game. Water polo is a game. Murder is a crime, and you will go to jail for it. I’ll drive you to the police station in town right this very minute.”

“Your automobile is wrecked,” Sensible pointed out.

“Well, I’ll take you down in Dr. Montgomery’s jeep, and you children can follow along in Dr. Lucafont’s automobile. I guess you’ll be able to see the inside of a doctor’s automobile after all.”

“It might be easier,” Dr. Lucafont said, “to put Stephano in my automobile and have the children follow behind. After all, Dr. Montgomery’s body is in my automobile, so there’s no room for all nine children, anyway.”

Colin groaned. “Please don’t make us do this again.”

“I’d hate to disappoint the children after they’ve had such a trying time,” Mr. Poe said. “We can move Dr. Montgomery’s body to the jeep, and—”

“We couldn’t care less about the inside of a doctor’s automobile,” April said impatiently. “I only made that up so we wouldn’t be trapped alone with Count Olaf.”

“You shouldn’t tell lies, orphans,” Count Olaf said.

“I don't think you’re in a position to give moral lectures to children,” Colin shot back.

“Alright,” said Mr. Poe. “Dr. Lucafont, you take him.”

Dr. Lucafont grabbed Count Olaf’s shoulder and began to lead him out of the Reptile Room. Sensible stared at him curiously. She had spent a good amount of time with Dr. Lucafont in the kitchen, and she had watched him open cans of food with his oddly stiff hands. She had watched him for long enough to know that Dr. Lucafont was not the person he claimed he was.

Sensible didn’t bite people anymore. Once she had learned how unhygienic most people were, she had stopped. But that day, she supposed she could make an exception.

She leaned over and bit Dr. Lucafont on the hand.

With a sharp crack, Dr. Lucafont’s whole hand came loose from his arm and fell to the floor, revealing a shiny metal hook. Dr. Lucafont looked at the hook, then at Count Olaf. Count Olaf gave a quick nod, and they darted out the door.

“The hook-handed man!” Violet shouted. “He’s not a doctor! He’s one of Count Olaf's henchmen!”

“After them!” said Nick.

The nine Baudelaires ran to the front doorway, but someone was already standing in it. It was a man wearing overalls and a brightly colored plaid suit. He was carrying an empty cage.

“Hey, kids,” the man said loudly. “The name's Bruce. I’m the director of marketing for the Herpetological Society. Your friend Mr. Poe called me to come and retrieve the snakes now that Dr. Montgomery has passed on.”

“You can’t take Uncle Monty’s snakes!” said Sensible.

“Why are you taking them?” Colin asked. “Where are they going?”

“These snakes need to be taken care of, so we’re giving them away to other scientists, zoos, retirement homes, and theater troupes. Those we can’t find homes for we’ll have put to sleep.”

“Sleep?” Solitude whimpered.

“But they’re Uncle Monty’s collection!” said Klaus. “It took him years to find all these reptiles.”

“It's the way it has to be,” Bruce said smoothly. “Good luck wherever they put you, kids.”

He brushed past them and walked into the Reptile Room, and the children sighed. Count Olaf and the hook-handed man were far away now, Uncle Monty’s reptile collection was going to be scattered to the winds, and the Baudelaire orphans were now going to be passed along to another guardian who they were likely to have never met.

“Silver lining,” Sunny said, which probably meant, “At least the Incredibly Deadly Viper is safe.”

“What do you mean?” Nick asked. “You heard Bruce. The Incredibly Deadly Viper is going to be sent to another herpetologist or put to sleep.”

Then Sunny began telling a very long story that even the other Baudelaires had trouble understanding. Sensible translated for her once Sunny was done.

“Sunny brought the Incredibly Deadly Viper to a woman in a taxi,” she said. “She said she would to take the snake to a safe place, promised to come back, and drove off.”

“Shrubbery,” Sunny said.

“Well,” Violet said. “At least we have that.”

“Yes,” Lilac agreed. “At least we know that there’s someone watching over us. There’s someone who cares.”

“Sigat,” Sunny said, which probably meant, “But for the wrong reasons.”

“Think about what it means,” Lilac went on. “Who knows who else is out there? There could be people—family members, friends of our parents—waiting for us, watching us. We’re not alone.”

“Uncle Monty was watching us,” April said quietly. “Gustav was watching us. But now they’re dead.”

“Gustav?” Colin asked. “Uncle Monty’s assistant?”

She nodded. “He’s been using his code to try to contact us. I just couldn’t figure it out on time. But he was there for us, watching and waiting.”

“Waiting for what?” said Nick.

As if in answer to his question, Mr. Poe walked up to the Baudelaire children, coughing into his handkerchief.

“I’ve just made a phone call,” he said. “Your Aunt Josephine has agreed to take you children in. You nine can stay at my home tonight, and tomorrow morning, we’ll set sail across Lake Lachrymose.”

He coughed once again and left.

Colin turned to Violet. “Do you know this Aunt Josephine?”

“A little bit,” she said. “I remember her holding me and singing a lullaby. I think I was a baby.”

“What was the lullaby?” Lilac asked.

“I don’t remember the words exactly. Something about a midnight snack?”

“Fantastic,” said Nick. “I always love a good midnight snack.”

“Me too,” said Klaus. “I hope Aunt Josephine is a good cook.”

“Carrot!” said Sensible.

The nine Baudelaires laughed as they walked toward Uncle Monty’s jeep, where Mr. Poe was waiting. But as they walked, they weren’t thinking of the jeep or the sharp tang of horseradish. Violet was thinking of her Aunt Josephine, humming a familiar tune and rocking her in her arms. Lilac was thinking of her siblings’ bedtimes. April was trying to count half-remembered words in her head, forgetting whether there were eight or ten uncoded words between each coded word, and Colin was looking at the sky through his broken spyglass. Nick was thinking of the bubbling Swarthy Swamp, and Klaus was thinking of good food. Sensible was thinking of the missing can of peaches, which had seemingly disappeared into the ground. And Solitude and Sunny weren’t thinking of much at all, since both of them were very tired after a long and frightening day.

Each of the Baudelaire orphans were wrapped up in their own itchy blanket of mystery. And as they thought and thought, walking down the winding road, they longed to pull those blankets tighter around themselves and fall asleep, nestled closely inside the mysteries they had been born into, and the mysteries they had made.


	17. "Nothing Will Go Wrong This Time"

“Colin? Klaus?”

Lilac stopped in her tracks, half-hidden by a large potted plant, and looked up. After spending the night at Mr. Poe’s house, she had gone looking for two of her brothers, who had disappeared before the rest of the Baudelaire children had woken up.

Colin and Klaus were sitting on the roof of the Poe house, their backs turned toward Lilac. A whittling knife and several thin wooden objects sat on top of the red shingles next to them. A metal ladder leaned against the wall nearest to Colin and Klaus. A twisted tree hugged the opposite wall, branching into a leafy canopy above them.

“Watch closely,” Colin was saying to Klaus.

He picked up one of the wooden objects, lifted his arm and flicked his wrist. The homemade dart spun out of his hand, flew through the air, and embedded itself in the knothole of the tree-trunk.

“Bull’s eye.”

“Who taught you how to do that?” Klaus asked.

“Uncle Monty did, that evening after the movies,” Colin replied. “He was surprisingly cool. He told me that Mother had taught him how to throw darts, among other things, when they were both children.”

“Wow,” said Klaus. “It’s hard to imagine Uncle Monty being—”

“Sporty?”

“I was actually going to say ‘a child.’ ”

“That’s what makes these so useful, though,” Colin said, gesturing to the pile of darts. “You don’t have to be strong or particularly athletic to defend yourself with one.”

He got up, tugged the wooden dart out of the tree-trunk, and handed it to Klaus. “Give it a try.”

Klaus raised the dart and squinted at the knothole. He closed one eye, then threw the dart. It hit the trunk and bounced off harmlessly.

“Try again,” Colin said. “Keep both your eyes open this time.”

Klaus tried again. Three times in a row, the dart bounced off the tree-trunk. But the fourth time, it stuck right in the center of the knothole.

“Nice shot!” Colin said. “See? I knew you could do it.”

After a few more successful throws, the two of them swung their legs over the side of the roof. Klaus climbed down the ladder and went back inside the house without noticing Lilac, but Colin paused. He looked over his shoulder to make sure no one was watching. Then he pulled the spyglass from his pocket and held it up to his eye. The sunrise looked the same through the spyglass. Nothing had changed.

Without really knowing what she was doing, Lilac hitched up her skirt and climbed up the ladder.

“Hey.”

Colin quickly put away the spyglass. “What are you doing here?”

“That thing you taught Klaus to do,” she said. “With the darts.”

“I just felt bad for him,” he said. “Yesterday in the jeep, when he said that he wasn’t like me or Nick…”

“Could you teach me too?”

“What?”

Lilac reached into her pocket and pulled out a handful of delicate objects. She had made the shafts and feathers from pieces of shed snakeskin, and the points had been carved from the lost baby teeth of a Fanged Faroe Viper.

“I was able to copy the design of a poison dart that Nick and I found in the swamp behind Uncle Monty’s house,” she explained. “I couldn’t replicate the poison, though. It’s made of some sort of ground-up bone from an animal that doesn’t live around here.”

“That’s brilliant,” said Colin. “And you want me to teach you how to throw those darts?”

Lilac nodded and sat down at the edge of the roof. She pinched one dart between her fingers and took careful aim.

“Now what?” she asked, not taking her eyes off the tree-trunk.

“Aim the dart a bit higher than your target,” Colin said. “Then you sort of flick it with your fingers. Watch.”

He picked up one of the wooden darts, aimed, and threw it. It landed with a _thunk_ right next to the one Klaus had thrown.

Lilac tilted her hand upward and threw the dart. It stuck deep in the tree-trunk, at least two feet higher than where she had intended. She sighed and walked over to retrieve it.

“Might I ask,” Colin said as she returned, “why you’re interested in learning this?”

“Count Olaf won’t stop until he gets his hands on our fortune,” she said. “And now we know that he’s not above murder. Our Aunt Josephine will be meeting us on Damocles Dock in a few hours, and I can’t let what happened to Uncle Monty happen to her, too.”

“We won’t let that happen,” he said firmly.

Lilac turned to Colin very suddenly, worry and fear in her eyes.

“Promise me, Colin,” she said. “Promise me that we’ll be safe with Aunt Josephine.”

“I can’t keep a promise like that.”

“Just say it. I don’t care if you can’t keep it.”

“Okay, okay.” He held his hands up. “I promise we’ll be safe with Aunt Josephine.”

Lilac turned back to face the tree-trunk.

“I promise too,” she said.

She pointed the poison dart at the knothole, took a deep breath, and threw.

* * *

The Baudelaire orphans sat on their suitcases at Damocles Dock, watching dark gray storm clouds move in overhead.

“Look what I have for you,” Mr. Poe said, holding out a small paper bag. “Peppermints!”

“Thank you, Mr. Poe,” April said as she took the paper bag. “That's very kind of you.”

“You can eat them on your cab ride to Mrs. Anwhistle’s house,” Mr. Poe said, coughing into his white handkerchief. “She apologizes for not meeting you at the dock, but she says she’s frightened of it.”

“Why would she be frightened of a dock?” Klaus asked.

“She’s frightened of anything to do with Lake Lachrymose,” Mr. Poe explained, “but she didn’t say why. Perhaps it has to do with her husband’s death. Your Aunt Josephine—she’s not really your aunt, of course; she’s your second cousin’s sister-in-law but asked that you call her Aunt Josephine—your Aunt Josephine lost her husband recently, and it may be possible that he drowned or died in a boat accident. It didn’t seem polite to ask how she became a dowager.”

He coughed. “Well, let’s put you in a taxi.”

“What does that word mean?” Violet asked.

Mr. Poe looked surprised. “I’m surprised at you, Violet,” he said. “A girl of your age should know that a taxi is a car which will drive you someplace for a fee. Now, let’s gather your luggage and walk to the curb.”

“ ‘Dowager,’ ” Colin whispered to Violet, “is a fancy word for ‘widow.’ ”

“Thank you,” she whispered back. She waved down a taxi, and in no time at all, the cab drivers—for there were two of them, one steering the wheel and one operating the pedals—piled all of the Baudelaire suitcases into the trunk and, with greater difficulty, all of the Baudelaires into the taxi.

“Goodbye, Baudelaires,” Mr. Poe said. “The banking day has already begun, and I’m afraid if I go with you out to Aunt Josephine’s, I’ll never get anything done. Please give her my best wishes, and tell her that I’ll keep in touch regularly.”

Mr. Poe coughed into his handkerchief. “Now, your Aunt Josephine is a bit nervous about having nine children in her house, but I assured her that you were very well behaved. Make sure you mind your manners and, as always, you can call or fax me at the bank if there’s any sort of problem. Although I don’t imagine anything will go wrong _this_ time.”

He gave the Baudelaire children a little wave. Violet rolled up the passenger side window as the taxi sped away from the dock.

Lilac glanced sideways at Colin.

“Nothing,” she repeated, “will go wrong this time.”

Colin nodded hesitantly, looking at the ceiling of the taxi, the carpeted floor, anywhere but Lilac’s face. His eyes landed on the paper bag in April’s lap.

“Should we have told Mr. Poe that we’re allergic to peppermints?”

“It didn’t seem worth mentioning,” Lilac said. “We have a lot more important things on our minds.”

“Like asking Aunt Josephine if she can help explain all the strange and mysterious things that keep happening to us,” Sensible said.

“Aunt Josephine?” one of the taxi drivers said. “You don’t mean Josephine Anwhistle?”

Violet blinked. “The very same.”

“I remember Josephine,” the other driver said. “We saw her around town a lot when we were children. She was always so fierce and formidable. You’re lucky to be living with her.”

“That’s good to hear,” Lilac said.

The taxi rumbled down a cobblestoned street that wound its way up a crooked hill. It passed several shops and diners that were all boarded up and abandoned. The only establishment that appeared to be open was a terrible-looking restaurant called The Anxious Clown, which was all lit up with neon lights.

“This town doesn’t seem very crowded,” April remarked. “I was hoping we might make some new friends here.”

“It’s the off-season,” one of the taxi drivers said. “The town of Lake Lachrymose is a resort, and when the nice weather comes it’s as crowded as can be. But around now, things here are as dead as the cat we ran over this morning. To make new friends, you’ll have to wait until the weather gets a little better. Speaking of which, Hurricane Herman is expected to arrive in town in a week or so. It’s supposed to be a doozy. Squeak and I are going to sit it out in a cabin with the works of Herman Melville and a large pot of vegetarian chili. You’d better make sure you have enough food up there in the house.”

“A hurricane on a lake?” Nick asked. “I thought hurricanes only occurred near the ocean.”

“A body of water as big as Lake Lachrymose,” the other driver said, “can have anything occur on it. To tell you the truth, I’d be a little nervous about living on top of this hill. Once the storm hits, it’ll be very difficult to drive all the way down into town.”

The Baudelaires looked down to see the town far, far below them. Damocles Dock was a tiny speck the size of a postage stamp, and out beyond the dock was Lake Lachrymose, which looked like a dark, spreading ink-stain, spilled by a writer who had penned the town into being long ago, then forgotten about it.

“You know,” the taxi driver rattled on, “what’s interesting about the storms in Herman Melville’s work is that they’re more metaphorical, or even allegorical, rather than the naturalistic style of Thoreau. The shore represents our tenuous hold on the earthly nature of our mortal existence, and the turbulent waters represent the villainy and troubles in our own lives, like a threatening rowboat getting closer and closer with each passing moment.”

Although what the taxi driver was saying was very interesting, the children were barely listening. Instead, they were staring into the lake as if hypnotized.

“Titanic,” Solitude said, which probably meant, “The lake is so enormous.”

“Verne,” Sunny said, which probably meant, “And it looks so deep.”

“I can almost understand why Aunt Josephine is afraid of it,” said Colin.

“Your Aunt Josephine,” one of the taxi drivers asked, “is afraid of the lake?”

“That’s what we’ve been told,” Violet said.

The driver shook his head in confusion. “I don’t know how she can stand it, then.”

“What do you mean?” Lilac asked.

“Well, if your Aunt Josephine is afraid of the water,” the other driver said, “I can’t believe she lives here in this house.”

He brought the taxi to a halt. The Baudelaires got out of the cab and took a good look at Aunt Josephine’s house. Nick’s jaw dropped.

“You have _got_ to be kidding me.”

The house was a large pile of boxy squares, all stuck together like ice cubes. The boxes hung over the side of the hill, attached to solid ground only by long, thin, metal stilts that looked like they might snap at any moment. The Baudelaires approached the house carefully, as if their weight would send the house toppling.

The taller taxi driver cleared his throat meaningfully.

“Do you children have a tip?”

Klaus thought hard. “There’s a series of four books,” he said, “about a town very similar to this one—old, abandoned, and near a large body of water, although the townspeople in these books drained their sea. There’s a taxi in it, and a library. I think you’d like it.”

The driver smiled. “That’s an excellent tip. Thank you, Klaus.”

He held out his hand, and Klaus shook it.

Hesitantly, Violet set her suitcase down and rang the doorbell. There was no sound, even when she put her ear to the door to listen. She rang it again, and again.

Colin frowned. He was about to knock on the door when it opened, revealing a pale woman with her white hair piled high on top of her head in a bun.

“Don’t knock!” she said. “You might get splinters. This door is made of wood, which is teeming with tiny shards, which in turn is teeming with infection. You must never knock.”

Violet frowned. “I don’t think—”

“I’m sorry,” Lilac interrupted. “I’m sure you’re right about all that. We’re looking for our Aunt Josephine. I’m—”

“Lilac Baudelaire, of course,” the woman said. “Look at you! You were only a baby when I saw you last. And this must be Violet. You must have been just one or two years old the last time we met—surely too young to remember me. I’m your Aunt Josephine. Come in quickly. Quickly, children— _ahhh!_ ”

She leapt backward in fear as the children crossed the threshold into the house.

“What—what’s the matter?” Nick asked.

“Not that quickly,” Aunt Josephine said. “You could trip over the welcome mat and decapitate yourselves.”

The Baudelaire children looked at each other, shrugged, and carefully stepped over the welcome mat. Once inside, they realized the house was chilly even though they were indoors, and completely dark.

“The doorbell doesn’t appear to be working,” Colin told Aunt Josephine.

“It’s disconnected,” she said. “There is the danger of electrocution. And be careful not to bump into the telephone. It should only be used in emergencies because, again—electrocution.”

“Actually,” Colin said, “I’ve read quite a bit about electricity. I’m pretty sure that the telephone is perfectly safe.”

Aunt Josephine’s hands fluttered to her white hair. “You can't believe everything you read,” she said. “Why, _The Daily Punctilio_ —”

“I’ve built a telephone from scratch,” April said. “If you’d like, I could take the telephone apart and show you how it works. That might make you feel better.”

“I don't think so,” Aunt Josephine said, frowning. “Now, this is the radiator. Please don’t ever touch it. You may find yourself very cold here in my home. I never turn on the radiator, because I’m frightened that it might explode, so it often gets chilly in the evenings.”

“I’ve fixed the radiator in our parents’ house several times,” Lilac said. “I can add some safety measures to your radiator to make sure it won’t… explode.”

“What’s in this room?”

Nick stood in front of a small wooden door. Aunt Josephine shrieked and ran toward the door, placing herself between the door and Nick.

“Never use the doorknob,” she said. “When you open this door, just push on the wood here. I’m always afraid that the doorknob will shatter into a million pieces and that one of them will hit my eye.”

She gave the door a gentle push to demonstrate. It swung open, revealing a large room containing seven beds and two cribs lined up in a neat row. At the foot of each bed was a trunk that looked brand-new, and there was a large closet for everyone’s clothes at the other end of the room. Scattered across the floor were several tin cans.

“I’m sorry that all nine of you have to share a room,” Aunt Josephine said, “but this house isn’t very big. I tried to provide you with everything you would need, and I do hope you’ll be comfortable.”

“I’m sure we will,” Lilac said. “Thank you very much, Aunt Josephine.”

“In each of your trunks,” Aunt Josephine said, “there is a present.”

The Baudelaires had not received presents for a long, long time. Smiling, Aunt Josephine walked to the first trunk and opened it.

“For Violet, Lilac, and April,” she said, “there are several lovely new dolls with plenty of outfits for them to wear.”

She reached inside and pulled out a plastic doll wearing a white wedding dress. “Isn’t she adorable? Her name is Pretty Penny.”

She opened another trunk and pulled out a tiny train car. “For Colin, Nick, and Klaus, there is a model train set. You can set up the tracks in that empty corner of the room.”

Finally, she reached into the smallest trunk. “And for Sensible, Solitude, and Sunny, here is a rattle. See, it makes a little noise.”

“It’s so generous of you to give us all of these things,” Lilac said.

“Delmo!” said Sunny, which probably meant, “A doll and a train set are good things for biting, but I don’t think my siblings are interested.”

“Delmo?” Aunt Josephine asked. “What do you mean by ‘delmo?’ I consider myself an expert on the English language, and I have no idea what the word ‘delmo’ means. Is she speaking some other language?”

“Sunny and Solitude don’t speak fluently yet, I’m afraid,” Colin said. “Just baby talk, mostly.”

“Grun!” Solitude shrieked, which probably meant, “I object to your calling it baby talk!”

“Well, I will have to teach them proper English,” Aunt Josephine said. “I’m sure you all need some brushing up on your grammar, actually. Grammar is the greatest joy in life, don't you find?”

“Yes,” Lilac said immediately. “We’ve always loved grammar.”

“We have?” Klaus asked.

“Of _course_ we have.”

Aunt Josephine smiled. “How wonderful! I love grammar so much. I’m excited to be able to share my love of grammar with nine nice children like yourselves. Well, I’ll give you a few minutes to settle in, and then we’ll have some dinner. See you soon.”

“Aunt Josephine,” Nick asked before she could leave, “what are these cans for?”

“Those cans? For burglars, naturally. You must be as frightened of burglars as I am. So every night, simply place these tin cans right by the door, so that when burglars come in, they’ll trip over the cans and you’ll wake up.”

“But what will we do then, when we’re awake in a room with an angry burglar?” Violet asked. “I would prefer to sleep through a burglary.”

Aunt Josephine’s eyes grew wide with fear. “Angry burglars?” she repeated. “Why are you talking about angry burglars? Are you trying to make us all even more frightened than we already are?”

“Of course not,” Lilac jumped in. “We’re sorry. We didn’t mean to frighten you.”

“Well, we’ll say no more about it,” Aunt Josephine said. “I’ll see you at the dinner table in a few minutes.”

With one last frightened glance around the room, she shut the door. There was a brief, stunned silence.

“Owo,” Solitude said, which probably meant, “ _Someone’s_ been to Crazy Town.”

“Don’t be rude,” Lilac said. “We’ll make this work.”

Violet picked up Pretty Penny and touched her wedding dress. “Do you think,” she asked, “Mr. Poe told Aunt Josephine about how Count Olaf tried to marry me?”

“Or how he tried to run Lilac, Klaus, and me over with a train?” Nick said, rolling the model train car back and forth across the blue carpet.

Sensible picked up the rattle and shook it. “I’m too old for rattles.”

“And what was all that about grammar?” said Colin. “Grammar is fine, but nothing to make a fuss about.”

“Aunt Josephine obviously worked very hard to prepare this room for us,” Lilac said. “She seems to be a good-hearted person. We shouldn’t complain, even to ourselves.”

“You’re right,” April said. “We shouldn’t complain.”

Klaus shivered. “I want to complain, anyway.”

Colin put his hand on Klaus’s shoulder and gave it a little squeeze of comfort. “I know,” he said. “But let’s try to make the best of what we have.”

“Soup’s on!” Aunt Josephine called from the kitchen. “Please come to dinner!”

The Baudelaires headed back down the hallway and into the darkened dining room, where Aunt Josephine had set the table for ten.

“Normally, of course,” Aunt Josephine said, “ ‘soup’s on’ is an idiomatic expression that has nothing to do with soup. It simply means that dinner is ready. In this case, however, I’ve actually made soup.”

Lilac smiled. “There’s nothing like hot soup on a chilly evening.”

“Actually, it’s not hot soup,” said Aunt Josephine.

Lilac’s smile wavered slightly. “Then what is it?”

“I never cook anything hot because I’m afraid of turning the stove on. It might burst into flames. I’ve made chilled cucumber soup for dinner.”

She noticed that one chair at the table remained empty. “Where’s your brother?”

“Kitchen,” Lilac said quietly, gazing down at her bowl of pale green soup.

“Nick!” Aunt Josephine shouted in alarm. She rushed into the kitchen, where Nick was staring blankly at the wall.

“What are you doing?”

Nick shrugged. “Dissociating in front of the fridge.”

“Come away from the fridge,” she said. “If it falls, it’ll crush a child like you flat.”

Colin gave a small cough. “Aunt Josephine, have you ever had children?”

“Oh, no,” she said. “My dear husband and I never had children because we were afraid to. But I do want you to know that I’m very happy that you’re here. I’m often very lonely up on this hill by myself, and when Mr. Poe wrote to me about your troubles, I didn’t want you to be as lonely as I was when I lost my dear Ike.”

“Was Ike your husband?” Violet asked.

“Yes,” she said in a faraway voice. “He was my husband, but he was much more than that. He was my best friend, my partner in grammar, and the only person I knew who could whistle with crackers in his mouth.”

“Our mother could do that,” April said. “Her specialty was Mozart’s fourteenth symphony.”

“Ike’s was Beethoven’s fourth quartet,” Aunt Josephine replied. “Apparently it’s a family characteristic.”

“I’m sorry we never got to meet him,” Lilac said. “He sounds wonderful.”

“He _was_ wonderful,” Aunt Josephine said. “I was so sad when he died. I felt like I’d lost the two most special things in my life.”

“Two?” Nick asked, sitting down at the table. “What do you mean?”

“I lost Ike,” she said, “and I lost Lake Lachrymose. I didn’t really lose it, of course. It’s still down in the valley. But I grew up on its shores. I used to swim in it every day. I knew which beaches were sandy and which were rocky. I knew all the islands in the middle of its waters and all the caves alongside its shore. Lake Lachrymose felt like a friend to me. But when it took poor Ike away from me, I was too afraid to go near it anymore. I stopped swimming in it. I never went to the beach again. I even put away all my books about it. The only way I can bear to look at it is from the wide window in the library.”

“Library?” Klaus asked. “You have a library?”

“Of course,” Aunt Josephine said. “Where else could I keep all my books on grammar? If you’ve all finished with your soup, I’ll show you the library.”


	18. "We're Lucky That She's Our Guardian"

Aunt Josephine’s library was shaped like an egg. One curved wall was devoted to rows and rows and rows of books about grammar, filling bookshelves of every shape and size. But it was the other wall that drew the children’s attention. From floor to ceiling, the wall was a window, and through the window was a spectacular view of Lake Lachrymose. When the children stepped forward to take a closer look, they felt as if they were flying high above the dark lake instead of just looking out on it.

“This is the only way I can stand to look at the lake,” said Aunt Josephine. “From far away. If I get much closer, I remember my last picnic on the beach with my darling Ike. I warned him to wait an hour after eating before he went into the lake, but he only waited forty-five minutes. He thought that was enough.”

“Did he get cramps?” Klaus asked. “That’s what’s supposed to happen if you don’t wait an hour before you swim.”

Nick rolled his eyes. “No, Klaus, he didn’t get cramps. He died.”

“In Lake Lachrymose,” Aunt Josephine explained, “If you don’t wait an hour after eating, the Lachrymose Leeches will smell food on you and attack.”

“Leeches?” Solitude asked.

“Leeches,” Nick explained, “are a bit like worms. They are blind and live in bodies of water, and in order to feed, they attach themselves to you and suck your blood.”

“Swoh!” Sunny shrieked, which probably meant, “Why in the world would you go swimming in a lake full of leeches?”

“The Lachrymose Leeches,” Aunt Josephine said, “are quite different from regular leeches. They each have six rows of very sharp teeth and one very sharp nose. They can smell even the smallest bit of food from far, far away. The Lachrymose Leeches are usually quite harmless, preying only on small fish. But if they smell food on a human, they will swarm around him and… and…”

Tears came to her eyes. “I apologize, children. It is not grammatically correct to end a sentence with the word ‘and,’ but I get so upset when I think about Ike that I cannot talk about his death.”

“We’re sorry we brought it up,” Lilac said quickly. “We didn't mean to upset you.”

“That’s alright,” Aunt Josephine said, blowing her nose. “It’s just that I prefer to think of Ike in other ways. Ike always loved the sunshine, and I like to imagine that wherever he is now, it’s as sunny as can be. Of course, nobody knows what happens to you after you die, but it’s nice to think of my husband someplace very, very hot, don’t you think?”

“Yes, I do,” Lilac said. “It _is_ very nice.”

“Aunt Josephine,” Colin said, “have you thought of moving someplace else? Perhaps if you lived somewhere far from Lake Lachrymose, you might feel better.”

“We’d go with you,” Lilac said.

“Oh, I could never sell this house. I’m afraid of realtors.”

Colin blinked. “You’re afraid of… realtors?”

“I shouldn’t have to tell you orphans there are many, many things to be afraid of in this world,” she said. “The safest strategy is to be afraid of them all.”

“Phobia,” Sunny mumbled, which probably meant, “Get her help.”

Aunt Josephine smiled nervously. “Would you like to see some pictures, children?”

She took down a worn photo album from a high shelf. The shelf seemed to move slightly as she handed it to Violet.

“Careful. Don’t get a papercut.”

Violet gingerly opened the front cover. The nine Baudelaires crowded around the album, more out of politeness than interest. April ran her finger across a black-and-white photograph of a much younger Aunt Josephine, sitting next to a smiling man on a beach.

“Is that Ike?” she asked.

Aunt Josephine giggled. “Wasn’t he handsome?”

Violet started to flip through the album. With each turn of a page, the Baudelaire children saw more and more curious things. Aunt Josephine holding a slingshot. Aunt Josephine standing next to a pockmarked dartboard and biting into an apple. Aunt Josephine dressed for a masquerade, picking a lock, a snake wrapped around her arm. Aunt Josephine lighting a match. Aunt Josephine aiming a harpoon gun at something high, high up in the sky. And Aunt Josephine peering into a very familiar device.

“That’s the spyglass,” said Colin. “Violet, turn back to the last page.”

“No, stay on this page,” said Nick. He stared at a grainy photograph of a circus tent. “You tamed lions, Aunt Josephine?”

“Oh, no, of course not,” she replied. “Your _parents_ tamed lions. Look, there they are, right in the corner of the photograph.”

“Our parents tamed lions?”

“Go back to the last page,” Colin repeated. “I want to see the spyglass.”

He reached over Violet and tried to turn the heavy cardstock page. Nick pushed the page back down, dislodging a photograph that had gotten stuck behind the others. It fluttered to the floor, and Klaus picked it up. The photograph showed several young people smiling in front of a set of smokestacks. One of them was a red-faced man that Klaus immediately recognized.

“Uncle Monty? You knew Uncle Monty?”

“That’s, er, not a good picture of me,” Aunt Josephine said. She reached for the photograph, but April snatched it away first. She stared at the faces smiling at her.

“Are those our parents? Was this some sort of club?”

“I recognize that man,” Violet said, pointing at a thin man in a bowler hat. “His name was Jake—no, Jack—”

Sunny placed her hand on the face of a woman standing beside the man. She was wearing a long black cloak and gold-rimmed spectacles, and she was staring into the camera as if she knew something it didn’t.

“Kayess,” Sunny said, which probably meant, “I recognize that woman, too. She took Ink from me near the Swarthy Swamp.”

Colin looked closer at the photograph. A spyglass hung from each of the young people’s belts—a spyglass identical to the one he had found in his father’s desk.

“What is this?” he asked. “Why do you all have spyglasses?”

“I don’t like the way I look in that picture!” said Aunt Josephine. She grabbed the photo album from the children, closed it abruptly, and sat on it. And though the Baudelaire orphans tried to get her to tell them more about the photograph for the better part of an hour, she would not say another word about it.

* * *

“We need to get her out of the house,” Nick murmured to Sensible on their third day of living with Aunt Josephine.

Their aunt was in the kitchen, humming to herself as she prepared a cold lime stew. Sensible had offered to cook for her, but Aunt Josephine had staunchly refused.

“When we lived with Count Olaf, we learned how to make puttanesca sauce,” Sensible had told her. “It was quite easy and perfectly safe.”

Aunt Josephine’s eyes had widened in alarm. “Count Olaf certainly does sound evil. Imagine forcing children to stand near a stove!”

The nine Baudelaires peeked into the kitchen. Aunt Josephine was afraid of knives, so she was attempting to peel a lime with her fingernails. When a few drops of lime juice spritzed her hand, she jumped back and yelped in fear.

Klaus sighed. “And I was looking forward to a midnight snack.”

“I know what to do,” April said. “Colin, come with me.”

The twins walked into the kitchen. Aunt Josephine’s back was to the children, so April tapped her on the shoulder. She screamed and scrambled backward.

“Oh, it’s just you, Baudelaires,” she said once she had gotten ahold of herself. “You startled me. I’m just so afraid of—”

“Hurricane Herman,” April finished for her. “I completely understand. The taxi drivers said it’s a huge storm headed our way.”

Aunt Josephine gasped. “A hurricane? Oh dear. We’ll need food! We’ll need supplies!” She grabbed Colin’s hands with her own lime-stained ones. “We must all go to town immediately.”

“Maybe my siblings and I could stay here,” Colin suggested.

Lilac emerged from the doorway. “What are you talking about, Colin? We’ll all go to town together.”

“But Colin has a good point,” said Aunt Josephine. “You never know what might happen in a small town. Have you ever read Thornton Wilder? Perhaps we should all stay here.”

“Of course,” said April, “but what if we run out of food in the middle of a hurricane? Wouldn’t that be frightening? Terrifyingly frightening?”

Aunt Josephine’s eyes grew very wide. “You’re right,” she said. “That _would_ be frightening. I suppose I’ll go alone.”

“You’ll do nothing of the sort,” Lilac said. “Being alone in town is dangerous. You could be a target for pickpockets and thieves.”

“There will be pickpockets and thieves,” April said, “whether we go with Aunt Josephine or stay at home.”

“Why don’t we compromise?” Colin said. “Lilac and I can go to town with Aunt Josephine, and the rest of you can stay here.”

“I’ll come too,” Nick said. “I need some fresh air.”

“A marvelous idea,” Aunt Josephine said. She clapped her hands together. “Come quickly! But not too quickly.”

Lilac was already at the front door. She opened it and guided Aunt Josephine outside.

“We won’t be long, children!” Aunt Josephine shouted. “Don’t do anything dangerous. You know, anything I wouldn’t do!”

The six remaining Baudelaires chorused their agreement from the hallway.

“Of course not!”

“Nothing you wouldn’t do!”

“We’ll be perfectly safe!”

Lilac pulled the door shut. The children looked at each other for precisely two seconds, not saying a word. Then they scattered.

Klaus turned every knob on the stove, eventually coaxing a small flame to life. Sensible searched through Aunt Josephine’s cabinets, looking for ingredients that she could turn into a meal. She found a mostly-empty bag of rice, which she emptied into a pot and placed onto the stove to cook.

“Risotto,” she said proudly.

Violet went to the laundry room, where the dented radiator sat against the wall. She had to bang the radiator around a bit to get it to work, but eventually a comforting heat began to spread throughout the house.

April grabbed Solitude’s hand and led her up the stairs.

“Schema?” Solitude asked, which probably meant, “Where are you taking me?”

“I noticed something in the library. We’ll be back in a minute!” she called downstairs.

In a drawer, Sunny found a pair of Shabbat candles that looked like they hadn’t been touched in years and years. She carefully bit away the clumps of melted wax, and Sensible used her green matches to light the candles one by one.

“Thanks, Sunny,” Klaus said, placing the candles in the center of the dinner table. The Baudelaires gathered around the table, and Sensible spooned the risotto onto five cracked porcelain plates.

“Violet, maybe you could use the rattle to invent a burglar alarm so Aunt Josephine won’t have to rely on piles of cans,” she said.

“Or better yet,” Violet said, “Aunt Josephine could realize that no one would be mad enough to break into this house. I have no idea how those stilts can hold up this much weight.”

“Lilac would know,” Sensible said. “She’s good at mathematical things.”

“Speaking of Lilac,” Klaus said, “don’t you think she’s been acting strangely? It’s like she’s trying to please Aunt Josephine.”

“She probably just wants Aunt Josephine to like us,” said Violet. “After all, we haven’t had much success with our last two guardians.”

“At least we know Aunt Josephine won’t run us over with a train,” Klaus said. “I mean, she was almost too afraid to walk into town.”

“And we know she won’t try to steal our fortune,” Sensible added. “We’ve been here for three days, and she hasn’t even mentioned the Baudelaire fortune once.”

“I guess we’re lucky that she’s our guardian,” said Violet.

“Limbo!” Sunny shrieked, which probably meant, “The bar is very low.”

Klaus swallowed one last spoonful of risotto. He looked down at his empty plate and did a double take.

“Violet, I think you should take a look at this.”

Engraved in the center of the cracked plate was the design of an eye.

* * *

“Aunt Josephine told us that she keeps all her books on grammar in her library,” April explained to Solitude as they walked down the upstairs hallway, “but she made a grammatical error.”

“Inconceivable!” Solitude shrieked, which probably meant, “Let me get this straight. Aunt Josephine made a grammatical error?”

April nodded. “The word ‘library’ is singular, meaning one. But this isn’t one library, it’s two. The one you see here—”

She grabbed one end of the tallest bookshelf and pulled. The shelf swung to the side, revealing a small box hidden in the wall behind it.

“—and the one you don’t.”

“Vid!” Solitude said, which probably meant, “Well spotted!”

“Aunt Josephine might not open up,” said April, “but her safe might.”

She knelt down in front of the safe’s combination lock.

“Most safes use three numbers. That means there are thousands of combinations.”

“Sixty thousand, eight hundred and forty,” Solitude said.

“Mother taught me all sorts of codes,” April said. “And in some codes, numbers substitute for letters and words. The key is probably something Aunt Josephine would remember. Something she cares about.”

“Grammar?” Solitude suggested.

April shook her head. “Too many letters. What else does she care about? Cold food? Doorbell safety?”

“Ike!”

“Good thinking, Sol,” said April. She started turning the combination lock to the left and right. “I is the ninth letter of the alphabet. K is the eleventh, and E is the fifth. 9–11–5.”

She tugged the safe open. The metal door swung toward her, revealing a pile of photographs and yellowed documents inside. Solitude took out one of the documents, which was a page of sheet music.

“Beethoven.”

“Plait woven?”

Solitude gave April an unimpressed look.

“I was just kidding. That’s obviously Ike’s whistling music,” April said. “And look at these photographs. Aunt Josephine wrestling with an alligator.”

“And winning.”

“Boxing, skydiving—who jumps out of a plane for fun? These are just like the photographs in her album. She wasn’t scared of anything.”

“Goby?” Solitude asked, which probably meant, “What happened to her?”

“I don’t know,” April replied. “What’s this?”

She pulled out a large cream envelope. Inside the envelope was a newspaper clipping and a fragile sheet of paper.

“Duchess Of Winnipeg Is Deaf,” she read out loud from the newspaper headline. “That’s an odd bit of news. It’s dated from over sixteen years ago.”

She turned her attention to the sheet of paper. It was a letter scrawled in untidy handwriting, little more than a note. The letter read: 

> Josephine:
> 
> Stay away from open windows.  
>  Avoid suspicious foods in restaurants.  
>  Check carefully under the bed.  
>  And look inside your spyglass.

April traced the signature at the bottom of the note, which wasn’t a name but an initial, a curlicued letter R. She slipped her mother’s ring off her finger and held it up next to the piece of paper. Comparing signatures.


	19. “I’m Just Afraid That Something Terrible Will Happen”

“Watch out for those avocados,” Aunt Josephine said. “The pit could become lodged in our throats. Oh, and watch out for that cart. It could break free and run us all over.”

Aunt Josephine, Lilac, Colin, and Nick were walking through a busy open-air market. Colorful stalls lined the cobblestoned streets, and the air was filled with delicious smells. The sky above them was bright blue, and the children almost couldn’t believe that a hurricane was headed their way.

“Everything’s fine, Aunt Josephine,” Lilac said.

While Aunt Josephine shopped for cucumbers, Colin pulled Lilac behind a nearby butcher’s stall. Large slabs of raw meat hung from huge hooks above them, like red and white ghosts.

“What’s all this about?” he whispered.

“I didn’t want Aunt Josephine to go to town alone,” she whispered back. “At least one of us should be with her, all the time.”

“For the next three years? You know that’s impossible.”

“I know. I’m just afraid that something terrible will happen.”

“What terrible thing? What could possibly go wrong?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Anything!”

“You’re starting to sound like Aunt Josephine.”

“Aunt Josephine’s fears are irrational,” she said. “Mine aren’t. We _have_ to keep an eye on her at all times.”

Colin peered out through the slabs of meat. He looked left, then right, then left again.

“Yeah, that’s a problem,” he said. “Because Aunt Josephine is gone.”

“ _What?_ ”

Lilac shouldered her way back into the street, Colin close behind. Sure enough, Aunt Josephine and Nick were no longer at the cucumber stand where they had been last. Lilac scanned the crowd, but she couldn’t catch a glimpse of a white bun.

“Aunt Josephine!” she called out. “Aunt Josephine, where are you?”

Suddenly, there was a loud clattering noise. A man wearing a sailor’s clothing had fallen into a melon cart, and now watermelons, cantaloupes, and honeydews were rolling everywhere. Standing over the man was Nick, his hands on his hips, and next to him was Aunt Josephine.

“Oh no,” Colin muttered.

He ran toward the disturbance. Lilac followed, annoyed that Nick had pushed a helpless man into a cart full of fruit, but more relieved that she had found Aunt Josephine.

“Nick, what are you _doing_?” Colin asked. “Apologize imm—”

He stopped in his tracks. The man lying in the melon cart was tall and very thin, wearing a blue sailor’s hat on his head and a black eye patch covering his left eye. There was a thick stump of wood where his left leg should have been, and just one long eyebrow above his one remaining eye.

Count Olaf struggled to his feet.

“No need to apologize, my boy,” he said in a gruff voice. “If anything, _I_ should be the one to apologize, for running into—what’s your name, boy?”

“Nick,” Nick said. “And you’re Count Olaf.”

“Count Olaf? I’ve never heard of such a man in my life,” Count Olaf said. “My name is Captain Sham, and my home is the sea.”

“No, it isn’t,” Nick said.

“Well, it’s… it’s a large lake.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Alright, alright. My home is _near_ a large lake,” Captain Sham said. “I have a new business renting sailboats out on Damocles Dock.”

He turned to Aunt Josephine. “Am I correct in thinking that you are this charming boy’s sister?”

Aunt Josephine’s face grew bright red. “Oh, no,” she said. “Nick is not my brother, sir. I am his legal guardian.”

Captain Sham clapped one hand to his face. “I cannot believe it. Madam, you don’t look nearly old enough to be anyone’s guardian.”

Aunt Josephine blushed again. “Well, sir, I’ve lived by the lake my whole life, and some people have told me that it keeps me looking youthful.”

“I’m new to this town, and beginning a new business, so I’m eager to make new acquaintances,” he said, tipping his blue sailor’s hat. “I’m happy to make your acquaintance, Miss…”

“Josephine Anwhistle,” Aunt Josephine said. “And these are Lilac, Colin, and Nick Baudelaire.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet all of you,” Captain Sham said. “Perhaps someday I can take you out on the lake for a little boat ride.”

“I’d rather eat shit,” Nick said.

Aunt Josephine blushed and looked sharply at Nick. “The children seem to have forgotten their manners. Please apologize to Captain Sham at once, Nick.”

“He’s not Captain Sham,” Lilac said impatiently. “He’s Count Olaf.”

Aunt Josephine frowned. “Mr. Poe told me to be on the watch for Count Olaf, but he did also say that you children tended to see him everywhere.”

“We see him everywhere,” said Nick, “because he _is_ everywhere.”

“He has the same shiny eyes as Captain Sham,” said Lilac, “and the same single eyebrow.”

“But plenty of people have those characteristics,” Aunt Josephine said. “Why, my mother-in-law had not only one eyebrow, but also only one ear.”

“The tattoo!” said Colin. “Look for the tattoo! Count Olaf has a tattoo of an eye on his left ankle.”

“But I don’t even have a left ankle,” Captain Sham said, gesturing to his peg leg. “It was all chewed away by the Lachrymose Leeches.”

Aunt Josephine’s eyes welled up with tears. “Oh, you poor man,” she said. “Did you hear what Captain Sham said?”

“He’s not Captain Sham,” Lilac tried one last time. “He’s—”

“You don’t think he would allow the Lachrymose Leeches to chew off his leg,” Aunt Josephine said, “just to play a prank on you? Tell us, Captain Sham. Tell us how it happened.”

“Well, I was sitting on my boat, just a few weeks ago,” he said. “I was eating some pasta with puttanesca sauce, and I spilled some on my leg. Before I knew it, the leeches were attacking.”

“That’s just how it happened with my husband,” she said.

“Here,” Captain Sham said, pulling a small card out of his pocket and handing it to Aunt Josephine. “Take my business card, and next time you’re in town, perhaps we could enjoy a cup of tea with sugar.”

“That sounds delightful,” she said, reading his card. “ ‘Captain Sham’s Sailboats. Every boat has it’s own sail.’ Oh, Captain, you have made a very serious grammatical error here.”

“What?” he said, raising his eyebrow.

“This card says ‘it’s,’ with an apostrophe. I-T-apostrophe-S always means ‘it is,’ ” Aunt Josephine explained. “You don’t mean to say ‘Every boat has it is own sail.’ You mean simply I-T-S, ‘belonging to it.’ It’s a very common mistake, Captain Sham, but a dreadful one.”

Captain Sham’s face darkened, and a scowl began to form on his face. But then he smiled.

“Thank you for pointing that out,” he said.

“You’re welcome,” she replied. “Come, children, it’s time to pay for our groceries. I hope to see you soon, Captain Sham.”

Captain Sham smiled and waved good-bye, but Lilac, Colin, and Nick watched as his smile turned to a sneer as soon as Aunt Josephine had turned her back. She had fallen for his story hook, line, and sinker, and there was nothing the Baudelaires could do about it.

* * *

“That Captain Sham is certainly a charming person,” Aunt Josephine said over a dinner of cold lime stew. “He must be very lonely, moving to a new town and losing a leg. Maybe we could have him over for dinner.”

Violet stirred the stew around with her spoon. She didn’t have the heart to tell Aunt Josephine that she and her siblings had eaten a hot meal while Aunt Josephine had been at the market, and they were quite full already.

“We keep trying to tell you, Aunt Josephine,” Colin said. “He’s not Captain Sham. He’s Count Olaf in disguise.”

Klaus looked up from his stew. “Count Olaf?”

“Aunt Josephine met a sailor in town today,” Lilac explained. “He’s put on an eye patch and a fake wooden leg, and he calls himself Captain Sham, but he’s quite clearly Count Olaf.”

“That’s awful,” said Klaus. “How do you suppose he found us?”

Aunt Josephine put down her spoon and placed her hands on the table. “I’ve had enough of this nonsense. Mr. Poe told me that Count Olaf had a tattoo on his left ankle and one eyebrow over his eyes. Captain Sham doesn’t have a left ankle and only has one eye. I can’t believe you would dare to disagree with a man who has eye problems.”

“Nick, Klaus, and I have eye problems,” Colin said, pointing to his glasses, “and you’re disagreeing with us.”

“I will thank you not to be impertinent,” Aunt Josephine said. “It is very annoying. You will have to accept, once and for all, that Captain Sham is not Count Olaf.”

“Aunt Josephine, the word ‘sham’ literally means fake.”

“I _know_ what the word ‘sham’ means.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out Captain Sham’s business card. “But look at his card. Does it say Count Olaf? No. It says Captain Sham. The card does have a serious grammatical error on it, but it is nevertheless proof that Captain Sham is who he says he is.”

“Business cards aren’t proof of anything,” said Colin. “Anyone can go to a print shop and have cards made that say anything they like. Just because something is typed doesn’t mean that it’s—”

Colin was interrupted by the ringing telephone.

“My goodness!” Aunt Josephine said. “What should we do?”

“Minka!” Solitude shrieked, which probably meant, “Answer it, of course!”

Aunt Josephine stood up from the table, but she didn’t move even as the telephone rang a second time. “It might be important,” she said, “but I don’t know if it's worth the risk of electrocution.”

“If it makes you feel more comfortable,” Violet said, “I can answer the telephone.”

She stood up and calmly picked up the telephone.

“Hello?” she asked.

“Is this Mrs. Anwhistle?” a wheezy voice asked.

“No,” Violet replied. “This is Violet Baudelaire. May I help you?”

“Put the old woman on the telephone, orphan.”

Violet froze, realizing it was Captain Sham. Quickly, she stole a glance at Aunt Josephine, who was watching her nervously.

“I’m sorry,” she said into the telephone. “You must have the wrong number.”

“Don’t you dare hang up on me, you wretched girl—”

Violet hung up.

“Someone was asking for the Hopalong Dancing School,” she told Aunt Josephine. “I told them they had the wrong number.”

“What a brave girl you are,” said Aunt Josephine. “Picking up the telephone like that.”

“It’s actually very safe,” said Violet.

“Haven’t you ever answered the telephone, Aunt Josephine?” Nick asked.

“Ike almost always answered it,” she replied, “and he used a special glove for safety. But now that I’ve seen you answer it, maybe I’ll give it a try next time somebody calls.”

Almost immediately after she spoke, the telephone rang again. Aunt Josephine jumped up from her seat.

“Goodness,” she said, “I didn’t think it would ring again so soon. What an adventurous evening!”

“I’m sure it’s just the dancing school again,” Violet said quickly. “Would you like me to answer it?”

“No, no,” Aunt Josephine said, walking nervously toward the telephone. “I said I’d try it, and I will.”

She took a deep breath, reached out a nervous hand, and picked up the telephone.

“Hello?” she said. “Yes, this is she. Oh, hello, Captain Sham. How lovely to hear your voice.”

Aunt Josephine listened for a moment, and then blushed bright red. “Well, that’s very nice of you to say, Captain Sham, but—what? Oh, all right. That’s very nice of you to say, _Julio_. What? What? Oh, what a lovely idea. But please hold on one moment.”

Aunt Josephine held a hand over the receiver and faced the nine children. "Baudelaires, please go to your room. Captain Sham—I mean, Julio. He asked me to call him by his first name—would like to speak with me in private, so run along so we can discuss without your eavesdropping.”

“I think it would be better if we stayed here,” said Lilac.

“Lilac,” Aunt Josephine said, “please go to your room.”

“Whatever Captain Sham has to say to you, he can say in front of all of us.”

“Perhaps you are confused by the meaning of the word ‘eavesdropping,’ ” Aunt Josephine said. “It means ‘listening in.’ If you stay here, you will be eavesdropping.”

“We _know_ what ‘eavesdropping’ means.” Colin grabbed Lilac’s hand. “Let’s go. You can’t attack someone through a telephone.”


	20. “I Used To Be A Fierce And Formidable Woman”

The nine Baudelaire children lay sideways on Violet’s bed, crammed in like a pack of sardines and frowning up at the ceiling.

“I thought we’d be safe here,” said April. “I thought that anybody who was frightened of realtors would never be friendly to Count Olaf, no matter how he was disguised.”

“Do you think that he actually let leeches chew off his leg just to hide his tattoo?” Nick wondered.

“Choin!” Sunny shrieked, which probably meant, “That seems a little drastic, even for Count Olaf.”

“Are you absolutely sure that Captain Sham is Count Olaf?” Sensible asked.

“I’m positive,” Lilac said. “He has the same eyebrow.”

“And the same voice,” Violet added, “no matter how hard he tries to disguise it.”

“But Aunt Josephine still fell for his disguise,” said Klaus.

“At least she isn’t as trusting as Uncle Monty,” April pointed out. “He let Count Olaf move right into the house.”

“At least then we could keep an eye on him,” Colin said.

“Tulate,” Solitude remarked glumly, which probably meant, “Although we still didn’t save Uncle Monty.”

“There must be something we can do this time,” Lilac said. “There’s always something. What do you think Captain Sham is up to this time?”

“Maybe he plans to take us out in one of his boats and drown us in the lake,” Nick suggested.

“Maybe he wants to push this whole house off the mountain,” Sensible said.

“Usher,” Sunny said, which probably meant, “Or maybe he hopes the house will collapse during Hurricane Herman.”

“Hirudinea!” Solitude said, which probably meant, “Maybe he wants to put the Lachrymose Leeches in our beds.”

“Maybe, maybe, maybe,” Violet said. “All these maybes won’t get us anywhere.”

“We could call Mr. Poe and tell him Count Olaf is here,” April said. “Maybe he could come and fetch us.”

“That’s the biggest maybe of them all,” Klaus said. “It’s always impossible to convince Mr. Poe of anything, and Aunt Josephine doesn’t believe us even though she saw Count Olaf with her own eyes.”

“She doesn’t even think she saw Count Olaf,” said Lilac. “She thinks she saw Captain Sham.”

“You mean _Julio_ ,” said Sensible.

“Did I hear someone say Julio?”

Aunt Josephine opened the door to the Baudelaires’ room. She looked a little pink as she sat herself down in a chair facing the nine children.

“I just got off the telephone with Captain Sham,” she said. “And I have wonderful news to share with you children.”

Nick blinked. “ _Wonderful_ news?”

“Baudelaires,” she said, “I know I am a disappointment to you and to countless others. Believe it or not, I used to be a fierce and formidable woman. Your parents and I were more than friends. We were associates. We were colleagues, comrades, collaborators, allies, volunteers. But these are troubling times.”

April nodded. “I know you miss Ike very much.”

“And I know you miss your parents very much,” Aunt Josephine said. “It’s a curious thing, the death of a loved one. It’s like walking up the stairs to your bedroom in the dark, and thinking there is one more stair than there is. Your foot falls down through the air, and there is a sickly moment of dark surprise as you try to readjust the way you thought of things.”

“That’s exactly what it’s like,” Nick said quietly.

“It’s terrifying,” she said. “But today, on the telephone, Captain Sham made me realize that I can’t be terrified forever. I think I am ready to be fierce and formidable again. And I think we can do it together.”

“That _does_ sound wonderful,” Sensible said.

“So can I leave you children alone a few more hours? He wants to take me out for a fried-egg sandwich.”

Violet blinked, wondering if she had heard Aunt Josephine wrong. “What?”

Klaus made a face. “Captain Sham is taking you on a _date_?”

“Don’t be vulgar, Klaus,” Aunt Josephine said. “It’s not a date, necessarily. It’s just two adults sharing quality time together over toasted rye bread and runny yolks. Now excuse me for a moment, children. I’m going to get a warm cardigan that’s flattering to my figure.”

She stood up and walked to the door.

Lilac grabbed Colin’s hand and ran to the door. “Aunt Josephine, you can’t!”

“Lilac, I am simply going to my room to get a sweater.”

Aunt Josephine pushed the door open, and then she was gone. Lilac darted through the door, dragging Colin through behind her. The door slammed shut. For several moments, the seven remaining Baudelaire children were too shocked to speak.

“So, this is a problem,” Violet finally said.

“You could say that,” said Klaus. “Aunt Josephine is going on a _date_.”

“With Captain Sham,” said April. “That’s the important bit.”

“What does she _see_ in him?”

“Apparently not Count Olaf,” Sensible said.

“This is just—wait.” Klaus stopped and looked at Nick, his eyes wide. “Do you think they’re going to kiss?”

Nick looked up at the ceiling. “Klaus, please stop thinking about Aunt Josephine’s love life and start worrying that Captain Sham is trying to steal our fortune again!”

“Capire,” said Solitude, which probably meant, “But I don’t understand. How will going on a date with Aunt Josephine help Captain Sham get our fortune?”

“Maybe he’s going to marry her,” Violet said, “and gain access to our fortune through Aunt Josephine.”

April got up and started pacing around the room. “If that’s his plan, then we can just tell Aunt Josephine to sign the marriage document with her left hand like you did, Violet.”

“She would be suspicious.”

“Then we’ll lightly injure her right hand so she has to sign with her left,” April said.

Nick gave her a skeptical look. “ _Lightly_ injure?”

“You know, something more serious than a papercut, but less serious than amputation.”

“Lightly injure Captain Sham instead,” Sensible suggested.

Violet stood up and held her hands in the air. “Stop,” she said. “We are not going to lightly injure anyone.”

“How about severely injure?” Sensible asked.

“We are not,” Violet said, “going to lightly _or_ severely injure anyone.”

“Confound,” Sunny said, which probably meant, “Then what can we do?”

“I don’t see what we _can_ do,” said Klaus. “The theater troupe is most likely watching from outside the house. We can’t leave.”

“There must be another way out of here,” Nick said.

“There is one other way,” Violet said. She crossed the room and opened the bedroom window.

“We can get out this way,” she said. “It’s at least a hundred-foot drop, but I saw some fishing nets in the kitchen. We could braid them into a ladder, then climb down. We’d reach the water in no time.”

April shook her head. “I don’t like this.”

“I don’t either,” Violet said. “If we climb down, we would have to leave the window open.”

“It’s not that,” April said. “There was a newspaper article in Aunt Josephine’s safe. I can’t explain it now, but the note inside the newspaper said to stay away from open windows.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. All I know is that whoever wrote it has something to do with this.”

April held up her hand with the ring.

“I don’t understand,” said Violet.

“To be perfectly honest, I don’t either,” April said. “But I know that climbing out this window is not a good idea. We don’t even know what Captain Sham’s plan is.”

“But we need to protect Aunt Josephine,” Nick said. “We have to warn her, even if it’s dangerous.”

Violet stood still for a moment, thinking. Then she closed the window.

“Come on,” she said. “We’ll think of something else.”

* * *

Lilac and Colin ran down the hallway. Aunt Josephine had already disappeared into her bedroom, which was all the way at the end of the hallway. By the time Lilac and Colin reached the room, they were tired and out of breath.

Lilac grabbed the doorknob and started to turn it, but a voice on the other side of the door caused her to stop.

“It’ll be good to have something hot for a change,” Aunt Josephine was saying.

For a moment, Lilac thought Aunt Josephine was talking to herself. But then she heard the heavy sound of a peg leg on the hardwood floor, and she realized that Captain Sham was in the room with Aunt Josephine.

“Then let’s get our fried-egg sandwiches, madam,” Captain Sham said. “Come now, Josephine. Our romantic ride in the back of a taxi awaits.”

The sound of Captain Sham’s peg leg grew louder, and Lilac realized that he was approaching the door. She pulled Colin into a small linen closet and closed the door quietly, heart pounding. Colin squeezed Lilac’s hand as Captain Sham and Aunt Josephine’s footsteps passed by the linen closet. Then the sound faded away, and they relaxed. Even so, Lilac counted to fifty before opening the closet door and peeking outside. The hallway was deserted.

“Where did they go?” Lilac whispered.

“I don’t know,” said Colin. “Maybe they went downstairs?”

The two of them tiptoed down the stairs, checking over their shoulders as they went. They felt as though Captain Sham would jump out at them at any moment. So they were already on edge when they heard glass shatter.

Lilac’s hand flew to the pendant around her neck. “What was that?”

“It came from the library,” Colin said.

Now Colin was the one dragging Lilac down the remaining stairs and down the long hallway to the library. He threw open the doors and burst inside. The room was freezing cold, and after one glance, Lilac and Colin knew why. The wide window had shattered. Except for a few shards that still stuck to the window frame, the enormous pane of glass was gone, leaving a vacant, Aunt Josephine-shaped hole.

“No,” Lilac whispered. She rushed to the window and looked out at the inky lake. “No, no, no, no, _no!_ ”

Sobbing, she grabbed the window frame, shards of glass cutting into her palms. She swayed on the spot, almost dangling over Lake Lachrymose with only her trembling grip on the window frame keeping her from falling down into its depths. Colin gently took hold of her arms and pulled her away from the window.

“It’ll be alright,” he said. “Lilac, look at me. It’s going to be alright.”

“I wouldn’t be too sure of that.”

Colin froze. Slowly, he turned around to face the person who had spoken. His eyes traveled from the person’s wooden peg leg, to his sailor’s uniform, to the eye patch covering his left eye. Captain Sham stood in the open doorway, arms crossed.

Without thinking, Colin flung his arms toward either side of the broken window, shielding Lilac from Captain Sham.

Captain Sham raised his one eyebrow. His one eye was very, very shiny. “You’re a few minutes late for a heroic rescue, Colin,” he said.

“What have you done with Aunt Josephine?” Colin shouted.

“Why, you can see for yourself,” Captain Sham said. “Josephine Anwhistle couldn’t live without her dear husband Ike. She took her own life by jumping out this window.”

“You’re lying,” Colin said.

“I wish I was,” Captain Sham replied. “If Josephine had just come to me, I could have done the job much more cleanly.”

He reached into his coat and pulled out a long knife. Colin recognized it as the same knife that he had brought to Uncle Monty’s house. Captain Sham began to walk toward the children, holding the knife out in front of him. His steps were slow and measured. He knew the Baudelaire orphans weren’t going anywhere.

After several agonizing seconds, Captain Sham finally stopped walking. The point of the knife was inches away from Colin’s chest. Colin pressed his hands against the wall and tried not to breathe. He wondered if it would be better to breathe anyway. If he was about to take his last breath, he’d might as well make it a good one.

But Captain Sham withdrew his arm and placed the knife back inside his coat.

“You didn’t think I would actually kill you, did you?” he said, his eyes shining brightly. “I need you alive to get your fortune.”

“I thought you only needed Violet.” Colin blurted out the correction before he could stop himself.

“Well, you’re just a heap of facts, aren’t you, Colin?” said Captain Sham.

He took a step forward. Colin took a step backward.

“Facts and facts,” Captain Sham went on, “and facts and facts.”

With each “facts,” he took another step forward, driving Lilac and Colin toward the wide window. Lilac stumbled, her boots slipping on the window frame. Captain Sham smiled coldly.

“But none of them,” he said, “do you any good.”

He placed one hand on each of the children’s shoulders, and pushed them out the window. And in a sickly moment of dark surprise, Lilac and Colin fell.


	21. “The World Is Scary And We Should Be Afraid”

> Dear children:
> 
> By the time you read this note, my life will be at it’s end. My heart is as cold as Ike and I find life inbearable. I know your children may not understand the sad life of a dowadger, or what would have leaded me to this desperate akt, but please know that I am much happier this way. As my last will and testament, I leave you three in the care of Captain Sham, a kind and honorable men. Please think of me kindly even though I’d done this terrible thing.
> 
> —Your Aunt Josephine

“I can’t believe it,” Klaus said, turning the paper over in his hands. The Baudelaire orphans had found the note on the library door. Now they stood in front of the huge broken window, looking out at Lake Lachrymose. The lake had seemed vast and mysterious when they had first arrived. Now it just looked empty.

“It’s all there in ink and shaky handwriting,” Violet said, looking over Klaus’s shoulder. “Aunt Josephine is dead, and she’s left us in the care of Captain Sham.”

“I don’t understand,” said April. “Why would she jump to her death?”

“She didn’t jump to her death,” Nick said quietly. “She was pushed. Look at this.”

He touched the broken edge of the window carefully. A piece of the window frame was missing, leaving a splintery gap on the side of the window.

“She was holding on,” he said, “right here. But then someone pushed her. She fell out the window, taking this piece of the frame with her.”

“But that doesn’t make sense,” said Klaus. “How could she leave a suicide note if she was pushed?”

“Maybe we’re thinking about this the wrong way,” Violet said. She felt a cold, uncomfortable pit growing in her stomach as she looked at the window and thought about it harder.

“Someone  _ was _ pushed out the wide window,” she said slowly. “But maybe it wasn’t Aunt Josephine.”

She stood on her tiptoes and reached up to the top of the jagged hole in the window. Her fingers closed around something small, something dark, something none of her siblings had been tall enough to see. She tugged it free. It was a scrap of black velvet, the same material that Lilac used to make her hair ribbons.

April’s face became very pale.

“No,” she whispered. “Lilac and Colin…”

All six Baudelaires were silent for a moment as they tried to process what had just happened.

“I don’t believe it,” Klaus repeated. “I—I don’t—”

“Aunt Josephine would have jumped first,” Violet said. If she tried to make sense of it, she wouldn’t have to think about the awfulness of what had happened.

“She would have jumped,” she continued, “and Lilac and Colin would have investigated the noise. Then someone pushed them through the hole.”

“Sham,” Sunny said.

Nick leaned over the window and looked down. “They might have lived,” he said. “It’s a long way to fall, but I think they would have survived.”

“Captain Sham would have made sure that they didn’t,” Sensible said.

“Dolofonia,” Solitude said, which probably meant, “Like how he made sure Uncle Monty was dead.”

April shook her head, tears streaming down her face. “No, no,” she said. “It’s not possible.”

Violet took a deep breath, steadying herself against the rim of the window. She could feel her siblings watching her, waiting to see what she would do. She looked out the window, and Nick was right. It was a long fall, but if you hit the water at the right angle, there was a chance you wouldn’t die.

Holding onto that tiny shred of hope, she turned around and faced her siblings.

“I’m going to call Mr. Poe,” she said. “He’s never of any help, but I can’t think of anything else to do.”

“Lilac would have said that there’s always something,” Klaus said. “We’ll stay here and wait for you.”

Violet nodded and left for the dining room, trying her best to hide how much her soul was shivering. Klaus read the note again.

“There’s something funny about this note,” he said. “But I can’t put my finger on it.”

“How can you say such a thing?” April asked. “Aunt Josephine has thrown herself out of the window, and Lilac and Colin are gone too. There’s nothing funny about it at all.”

“Not funny as in a funny joke,” Klaus said. “Funny as in a funny smell. In the very first sentence she says, ‘my life will be at it’s end.’ ”

“And now it is,” Sensible said solemnly.

“That's not what I mean,” Klaus said impatiently. “She uses ‘it’s,’ I-T-apostrophe-S, which always means ‘it is.’ But you wouldn’t say ‘my life will be at it is end.’ She means I-T-S, ‘belonging to it.’ ”

“You’re right,” Nick said. He picked up Captain Sham’s business card, which was still lying on the table. “Remember when she saw this card? ‘Every boat has it’s own sail.’ She said it was a serious grammatical error.”

“Bunpo!” Sunny said, which probably meant, “Who cares about grammatical errors when Aunt Josephine has jumped out the window?”

“But Aunt Josephine would have cared,” Nick pointed out. “That’s what she cared about most: grammar. Remember, she said it was the greatest joy in life.”

“Well, it wasn’t enough,” April said sadly. “No matter how much she liked grammar, it says she found her life unbearable.”

“But that’s another error in the note,” Klaus said. “It doesn’t say ‘unbearable,’ with a U. It says ‘inbearable,’ with an I.”

“ _You_ are being unbearable, with a U,” April snapped.

“And _you_ are being stupid,” Klaus replied, “with an S.”

“Aget!” Solitude shrieked, which probably meant, “Please stop fighting!”

April and Klaus looked at their younger sister and then at one another. They knew Solitude was right.

“I’m sorry, Klaus,” said April. “You’re not unbearable. Our situation is unbearable. And… and I’m scared for Colin.”

“I know,” said Klaus. “I’m sorry, too. You’re not stupid, April. You’re very clever. In fact, I hope you’re clever enough to get us out of this situation. Aunt Josephine has jumped out the window and left us in the care of Captain Sham, and I don’t know what we can do about it.”

“Yes, yes,” Violet was saying on the telephone. “I understand. I’ll tell them. Of course I’ll tell them. I promise I’ll tell them. Goodbye.”

She put down the telephone. “Mr. Poe says we can always rely on Mulctuary Money Management.”

“That’s funny,” Klaus said. “Funny as in a funny joke.”

“Well, Mr. Poe is on his way,” she said. “He said on the phone that he would be here first thing in the morning, so we don’t have long to wait. Who knows, maybe he can be of some help.”

Nick sighed. “I wish you hadn’t read Mr. Poe that note. Then we could have torn it up and forged a new one in her handwriting that didn’t mention Captain Sham.”

“Wouldn’t it be difficult to imitate her handwriting?” April asked.

“Maybe it’s not her handwriting at all,” said Sensible.

“Of course!” Violet cried. “That’s what Captain Sham did! _He_ wrote this letter, not Aunt Josephine!”

Klaus’s eyes lit up. “That explains ‘it’s!’ ”

“That explains ‘inbearable!’ ” Nick said.

“Leep!” Sunny shrieked, which probably meant, “Captain Sham threw Aunt Josephine out the window and then wrote this note to hide his crime. Then he threw out Lilac and Colin because they saw him do it. What a terrible thing to do!”

“Imagine the terrible things he’ll do to us,” April said, “if we don’t expose his crime. I can’t wait until Mr. Poe gets here so we can tell him what happened.”

As if on cue, three knocks sounded at the door. April opened the peeling white door, and there stood Mr. Poe in the gloomy light of dawn.

“Mr. Poe,” she said.

“Hello, Lilac,” he replied.

On an ordinary day, she would have corrected him, but hearing her sister’s name had made the words stick in her throat. It reminded her that Lilac was missing, and that Colin was missing too, and April didn’t know where they were or what misfortunes had befallen them. And when she had opened the door, it had been a silly thing to think, but for a brief moment she had convinced herself that it was her brother and sister standing on the other side of the door, safe and sound and preferably with a police officer who had already arrested Captain Sham.

But she couldn’t say any of those things.

“Mr. Poe,” April said instead, and without any warning, she burst into tears.

Mr. Poe put down his briefcase and put away his handkerchief. He put his arms around April the best he could.

“There, there,” he murmured uncomfortably. It didn’t make April feel better, but she appreciated that he was making an effort.

Eventually she managed to stop crying, and as she dried her tears on Mr. Poe’s handkerchief, Nick and Klaus explained Aunt Josephine’s note to Mr. Poe.

“Forgery?” Mr. Poe said. “Forgery is a very serious charge.”

“Not as serious as murder,” said Nick, “and that’s what Captain Sham did. He murdered Aunt Josephine and forged a note.”

“But why would this Captain Sham person go to all this trouble just to place you under his care?”

“We’ve already told you,” Violet said. “Captain Sham is really Count Olaf in disguise.”

“These are very serious accusations,” Mr. Poe said firmly. “I must say, other than a gaping, middle-aged woman-shaped hole in the window, I can see no sign of a struggle or a break-in. I understand that you children have had some terrible experiences, and I hope you’re not letting your imagination get the best of you. Remember when you lived with Uncle Monty? You were convinced that his assistant, Stephano, was really Count Olaf in disguise.”

“But Stephano _was_ Count Olaf in disguise.”

“That’s not the point,” Mr. Poe said. “The point is that you can’t jump to conclusions. If you really think this note is a forgery, then we have to stop talking about disguises and do an investigation. Somewhere in this house, I’m sure we can find something that your Aunt Josephine has written. We can compare the handwriting and see if this note matches up.”

The Baudelaire orphans looked at one another.

“That’s… actually an excellent idea,” Nick said. “If the note we found on the library door doesn’t match Aunt Josephine’s handwriting, then it was obviously written by somebody else. We didn’t think of that.”

Mr. Poe smiled. “You see? You’re very intelligent children, but even the most intelligent people in the world often need the help of a banker. Now, where can we find a sample of Aunt Josephine’s handwriting?”

“Kitchen,” Nick said.

“She left her shopping list in the kitchen when we got home from the market,” Violet explained.

“Chuni!” Sunny shrieked, which probably meant, “Let’s go to the kitchen and get it.”

* * *

The Baudelaires and Mr. Poe gathered around the kitchen counter, where Aunt Josephine’s shopping list lay.

“Look at the V in ‘several gallons of vinegar,’ and how it matches the V in ‘Violet’ she wrote in the note,” said Violet.

“And look at the C in ‘cold soup ingredients,’ and how it matches the C in ‘Captain Sham,’ ” said April.

“And look where she writes ‘I think shopping is terribly dangerous’ and how it matches ‘think of me kindly, even though I’d done this terrible thing,’ ” said Klaus.

“It should be ‘I’ve done this terrible thing,’ ” Nick said quickly. He was facing the fridge, his hands clasped behind his back. “She made a—”

“Yes, it is a terrible thing,” Mr. Poe interrupted. “And I’m sure it's very upsetting to read. But once and for all, we can see the note is not a forgery. Look at the curvy V’s. Look at the squiggly C’s. Look at the oval dots over the I’s. I’m no graphologist, but I can certainly tell that these were written by the same person.”

“You're right,” Klaus said miserably. “I know that Captain Sham is behind this somehow, but Aunt Josephine definitely wrote this note.”

“And that,” Mr. Poe said, “makes it a legal document.”

“Does that mean we have to live with Captain Sham?” April asked.

“I’m afraid so,” Mr. Poe replied. “Someone’s last will and testament is an official statement of the wishes of the deceased. You were placed in Aunt Josephine’s care, so she had the right to assign you to a new caretaker before she leaped out the window. It’s very shocking, certainly, but it’s entirely legal.”

“We won’t go live with him,” Klaus said. “He’s the worst person on earth.”

“He’ll do something terrible,” April said. “I know it.”

Violet nodded in agreement. “All he’s after is the Baudelaire fortune.”

“Gind!” Solitude said, which probably meant, “Please don’t make us live with this evil man.”

"I know you don’t like this Captain Sham person,” Mr. Poe said, “but there’s not much I can do about it. I’m afraid the law says that that’s where you'll go.”

“We’ll run away,” April said. “Or fight him.”

“Severely injure,” Sensible agreed.

“You will do nothing of the kind,” Mr. Poe said sternly. “Your parents entrusted me to see that you would be cared for properly. You want to honor your parents’ wishes, don't you?”

“No,” said Sunny, which probably meant, “I don’t think our parents wished us to be cared for by Captain Sham.”

“Think of what your poor mother and father would say if they knew you were threatening to run away from your guardian,” he said. “Now, I got ahold of Captain Sham while I was driving here. He was shocked to hear of your Aunt Josephine’s death but overjoyed at the prospect of raising you children. He agreed to meet in a half hour for lunch at a restaurant in town, and after lunch we’ll go over the details of your adoption. By tonight you should be staying in his house. I’m sure you're relieved that this can be sorted out so quickly. Give me a moment to make a reservation at The Anxious Clown.”

As soon as Mr. Poe stepped out of the room, the Baudelaires turned to Nick. He blinked.

“What?”

“Don’t ‘what’ me,” Violet answered. “You’ve barely said a word since we entered the kitchen. You’ve just been standing in front of the fridge.”

“You’ve figured something out,” April said. “Now, what is it?”

“I’m not sure,” Nick said. “I might have begun figuring something out. Something that could help us. But I need more time.”

“But we don't have any time!” April cried. “We’re going to have lunch with Captain Sham right now!”

“Then we’re going to have to make some more time, somehow,” Nick said.

April sighed. “How can we make more time?”

“You're the inventor,” Nick answered. “Invent something.”

“But you can’t invent things like time,” April said. “You can invent things like automatic popcorn poppers. You can invent things like steam-powered window washers. But you can’t invent more time.”

April grabbed her coat from its hook and put it on. She knew it would be cold outside, so she put her hands in the pockets and heard something crinkle inside. The answer was right there with her, she realized. Hidden in her pocket was a way to invent time.

* * *

As they fell, Lilac and Colin screamed.

Colin flailed his arms, trying to find anything to hold onto. In a moment of incredible luck, he collided face-first with one of the beams that held up Aunt Josephine’s house. He grabbed onto the beam, holding on for dear life as splinters rained down onto his head.

Lilac was still holding onto his arm, but she was too far away from the beam to grab it. She swayed above the churning waters below, one hand holding onto Colin in a death grip, the other holding a piece of the broken window frame. He could feel her hand slipping, but he was too terrified of letting go to adjust his grip.

Dangling in the air, she kicked both her legs toward the beam, as if she was on a swingset. Her hand slid down from Colin’s elbow to his forearm, and they cried out in unison.

She swung again, and Colin’s arm shook. Her hand slid down to his wrist.

“Stop it!” he shouted. “It’s too dangerous!”

“There’s no other option!” she shouted back. “I have to try!”

She swung one more time. Just as Colin’s fingers slipped from her grasp, she managed to grab the beam with her other hand. She hoisted herself onto a horizontal beam that she could sit on, then helped Colin up. They sat in silence for a few moments, catching their breath.

“We have to get back down to the ground,” Colin said. “Do you think we can we jump?”

Lilac imagined the arc the two of them would make as they fell.

“It’s a long way to fall,” she said. “But… I think we’d survive.”

Colin looked down and almost fell off of the beam. They were a dizzyingly long way from the surface of the lake.

“Really?”

“I’m not certain. But there’s nothing else we can do.”

“I thought there was always something.”

“There _is_ always something,” she said. “This is it.”

She took a deep breath, then another. She grabbed Colin’s hand and held it tightly. He grabbed the frames of his glasses to make sure he wouldn’t lose them during the fall.

“On three,” she said. “One, two, three!”

Lilac brought the piece of broken window frame down onto the beam in between them, splitting the beam in two. Their stomachs dropped as they fell through the air again for three, four, five seconds. When they finally plunged into the water, it felt more like they had hit concrete. They broke the surface, gasping from the freezing cold.

“There!” Lilac cried, pointing at a nearby outcropping of shiny gray rocks.

They swam toward the rocks. The waves were rolling in the opposite direction, splashing in the children’s faces and often forcing them backward. But eventually, with tired arms and lips stinging with salt, Lilac and Colin pulled themselves up onto the rocks. They lay on their backs, soaking wet.

“What just happened?” Lilac asked.

“What just happened is that Captain Sham pushed us out a window,” Colin said. “And it was terrifying.”

“This must be how Aunt Josephine felt,” she said.

“Maybe she was right,” he said, sitting up. “The world is scary and we should be afraid.”

He turned to Lilac. “This is your fault.”

She pushed herself up onto her elbows. “Oh, Captain Sham pushing us and Aunt Josephine out a window is my fault?” she said. “You’re being unreasonable.”

“And you’re being stupid.”

“I was trying to _save_ Aunt Josephine!”

“Well, you didn’t have to drag _me_ into it!” he shouted. “You made me promise that we would be safe with Aunt Josephine. That Count Olaf wouldn’t come for us, that we would find adults who could help us, that our new guardian would be just like our parents. That was an unfair promise, Lilac. Do you know why? It’s because no matter where we go, Count Olaf will be there. No matter who we tell, no one will listen to us. There is nowhere safe for us and no guardian can help us. And our parents are _never coming back_!”

Lilac looked down at her lap. She picked a glass shard out of her palm. Then she balled up part of her skirt and used it to staunch the bleeding. It stung, but Colin’s words had hurt her more.

“I shouldn’t have made you promise,” she said quietly. “It _was_ unfair. I was just frightened of losing another guardian. And I’m supposed to take care of you. How could I be a good sister if I was the only one of us who was frightened?”

“We’re all frightened,” he said. “Just in different ways. If you were a good sister, you would know that. Violet did.”

Lilac flinched, and Colin knew he had been wrong to say it, even if he thought it was true.

“I didn’t mean—”

“Fuck you, Colin,” she said quietly. “Jackass.”

She slowly got to her feet and wrung the water out of her dress. Then she turned around, hitched up her skirts, and ran off in the direction of the town. Colin got up, wiped off his glasses, and ran after her.

“Lilac!” he shouted. “Lilac, wait! I didn’t mean it!”

Lilac didn’t stop for him. She disappeared into the early evening mist.


	22. “The Surrounding Area Has Been Flooded”

“Hello! I’m Larry, your waiter,” said a short, skinny man in a goofy clown costume. “Welcome to the Anxious Clown restaurant, where everybody has a good time, whether they like it or not. I can see we have a whole family lunching together today, so allow me to recommend the Extra Fun Special Family Appetizer. It’s a bunch of things fried up together and served with a sauce.”

“What a wonderful idea,” Captain Sham said. “An Extra Fun Special Family Appetizer for an extra fun special family—mine.”

“No!” Solitude shrieked. She tugged on April’s sleeve.

“I’ll just have water, thank you,” April told Larry. “The same for the rest of my family.”

“And a glass of ice cubes for Sunny, please,” Violet added.

“I’ll have a cup of coffee with nondairy creamer,” Mr. Poe said.

“Oh, no, Mr. Poe,” Captain Sham said. “Let’s share a nice big bottle of red wine.”

“No thank you, Captain Sham,” Mr. Poe said. “I don’t like to drink during banking hours.”

“But this is a celebratory lunch!” Captain Sham exclaimed. “We should drink a toast to my three new children. It’s not every day that a man becomes a father.”

“Please, Captain,” Mr. Poe said. “It’s heartening to see that you’re glad to raise the Baudelaires, but you must understand that the children are rather upset about their Aunt Josephine.”

“I’m upset, too,” Captain Sham said, brushing a fake tear away from his one eye. “Josephine was one of my oldest and dearest friends.”

“You met her yesterday,” Nick pointed out, “at the market.”

“It does only seem like yesterday,” Captain Sham said, “but it was really years ago. She and I met in cooking school. We were oven partners in the Advanced Baking Course.”

“You weren’t _oven partners_ ,” April said, disgusted at his lie. “Aunt Josephine was desperately afraid of turning on the oven. She never would have attended cooking school.”

“We soon became friends,” Captain Sham went on, “and one day she said to me, ‘If I ever adopt some orphans and then meet an untimely death, promise me you will raise them for me.’ I told her I would, but of course I never thought I would have to keep my promise.”

“Josephine is dead?” Larry asked suddenly. Underneath his clown makeup, he looked stricken.

“Yes,” Captain Sham said. “Josephine Anwhistle jumped out of the window of her own home late last night. Didn’t you hear?”

“I didn’t realize this was a sad occasion,” Larry said. “In that case, allow me to recommend the Cheer-Up Cheeseburgers. The pickles, mustard, and ketchup make a little smiley face on top of the burger, which is guaranteed to get you smiling, too.”

“That sounds like a good idea,” Captain Sham said. “Bring us all Cheer-Up Cheeseburgers, Larry.”

“They’ll be here in a jiffy,” the waiter promised. He took a few steps backward, then ran into the kitchen.

“Odd service, here,” Mr. Poe remarked. “After we’ve finished our cheeseburgers, Captain Sham, there are some important papers for you to sign. I have them in my briefcase, and after lunch we’ll look them over.”

“And then the children will be mine?” Captain Sham asked.

“Well, you’ll be caring for them, yes,” Mr. Poe said. “Of course, the Baudelaire fortune will still be under my supervision, until Violet comes of age.”

“What fortune?” Captain Sham asked. “I don't know anything about a fortune.”

“Perjure!” Sunny shrieked, which probably meant, “Of course you do!”

“The Baudelaire parents,” Mr. Poe explained, “left an enormous fortune behind, and the children will inherit it when Violet comes of age.”

“Well, I have no interest in a fortune,” Captain Sham said. “I have my sailboats. I wouldn’t touch a penny of it.”

“Well, that’s good,” Mr. Poe said, “because you _can’t_ touch a penny of it.”

“We’ll see,” Captain Sham murmured.

“What?” Mr. Poe asked.

“Here are your Cheer-Up Cheeseburgers!” Larry sang out, appearing at their table with a tray full of terrible, greasy-looking food. “Enjoy your meal.”

While the rest of the Baudelaire children began to eat their cheeseburgers, April didn’t touch her meal. Instead, she carefully reached into her coat pocket and pulled out the bag of peppermints that Mr. Poe had given her on Damocles Dock. One by one, she unwrapped seven peppermints and, without drawing attention to herself, placed six of them on Violet’s lap, keeping one peppermint for herself.

Violet looked at April, confused at first, then realizing what her sister intended to do with the peppermints. Quietly, she passed five of the peppermints on to Nick, who was sitting next to her. Nick, in turn, passed them down to Klaus, on and on until each Baudelaire orphan had a single unwrapped peppermint on their lap.

When Mr. Poe began telling a boring story about a carton of milk, the seven Baudelaires placed the peppermints into their mouths and swallowed. In a few minutes, Violet and April began to break out in red, itchy hives. Nick and Klaus’s tongues started to swell up. Solitude and Sunny broke out in hives _and_ had their tongues swell up. Oddly enough, nothing was happening to Sensible, who had never eaten a peppermint before. April gave her a questioning look, and she shrugged.

“Why, children,” Mr. Poe said, “you look terrible.”

“There must be something in this food that we’re allergic to,” Violet said, trying to ignore her itching hives.

“Just take deep breaths,” Captain Sham said dismissively.

“But Captain Sham, I feel terrible,” April said.

Sensible, who was of course perfectly fine, began to wail as loudly as she could. Mr. Poe, looking alarmed, tried to scoot away from her, as if allergies were contagious.

“I think we should go home and bluh—I mean, lie down,” said Nick, who was struggling to speak with his swollen tongue.

“Just lean back in your seat,” Captain Sham said sharply. “There’s no reason to leave when we’re in the middle of lunch.”

“Why, Captain Sham,” Mr. Poe said, “the children are quite ill. Come now, I’ll pay the bill and we’ll take the children home.”

“No, no,” Violet said quickly. “We’ll get a taxi. You two stay here and take care of all the details.”

Captain Sham gave Violet a dark look. “I wouldn’t dream of leaving you all alone.”

“Well, there _is_ a lot of paperwork to go over,” Mr. Poe said. “We wouldn’t be leaving them alone for long.”

“Our allergies are fairly mild,” Violet said. She stood up and led her siblings toward the front door. “We’ll just lie down for an hour or two while you have a relaxing lunch. Once you’ve signed all the papers, Captain Sham, you can just come and retrieve us.”

Captain Sham scowled. “I’ll do that,” he replied. “I’ll come and retrieve you very, very soon.”

“Good-bye, children,” Mr. Poe said. “I hope you feel better soon. You know, Captain Sham, there’s someone at my bank who has terrible allergies. Why, I remember one time…”

“Leaving so soon?” Larry asked the children as they buttoned up their coats and left the restaurant. The sky had darkened in the last hour, and the wind was blowing hard. Violet pulled Sunny closer to shield her from the rain that had started to drizzle from the sky.

A battered yellow taxi stopped in front of the children. The window rolled down, and two familiar faces peered out the driver’s side.

“Storm’s coming,” one of the taxi drivers said. “You kids need a taxi?”

* * *

“Bluh bluh bluh bluh bluh,” Nick said, as the three children got out of the taxi and headed toward Aunt Josephine’s house.

“I don't understand what you’re saying,” Violet told him.

“Bluh bluh bluh bluh bluh,” Nick repeated urgently.

“Never mind, never mind,” Violet said, opening the door and ushering her siblings inside. “Now you have the time that you need to figure out whatever it is that you’re figuring out. Now, unless you need us to help you, I’m going to give the babies, April, and myself a baking soda bath to help our hives.”

“Bluh!” Sunny shrieked, which probably meant, “Good, because my hives are driving me crazy!”

“Bluh,” Nick said, nodding vigorously. He grabbed Klaus with one hand and Sensible with the other hand, and led them into the library. The rain had soaked some of Aunt Josephine’s comfortable chairs, and Nick grimaced as he sat down with a squelch. A few books had fallen from their shelves and blown over to the window, where water had ruined them, which made Klaus very sad to see.

“Bluh bluh bluh,” Nick said, taking Aunt Josephine’s note out of his pocket and placing it on the table. He crossed to the shelves and began to scan the spines of Aunt Josephine’s books, looking for titles. He piled three heavy books into Klaus’s arms, and Klaus staggered under their weight as he carried them to the table.

“ _Basic Rules of Grammar and Punctuation?_ ” Sensible read from the covers. “ _The Handbook for Advanced Apostrophe Use? The Correct Spelling of Every English Word That Ever, Ever Existed?_ These books look dull. Why are you wasting valuable time studying grammar?”

“Bluhcause,” Nick said, finding that the swelling in his tongue had gone down a bit. “I think Bluh Josephine left us a message in bluh note.”

“She was miserable, and she threw herself out the window,” said Sensible. “What other message could there be?”

“There are too many grammatical mistakes in the bluh,” Nick said. “Aunt Josephine loved grammar, and she’d never make that many mistakes unless she had a bluh reason. I think it’s a code.”

“Maybe bluh should wait for April to come back,” Klaus said. “She’s good with codes.”

“We can figure this out bluhselves,” Nick replied. “We just have to count bluh the grammatical mistakes.”

“Bluh do you mean?” Klaus asked, wiping raindrops off his glasses and grabbing a pen.

“Well, we already know that bluh first sentence uses the wrong ‘its,’ ” Nick said. “I think that was to get our attention. But look at the second bluhtence. ‘My heart is as cold as Ike and I find life inbearable.’ ”

“But the correct bluh is ‘unbearable,’ ” Klaus said, “with a U.”

“Bluh I think there’s more,” Nick said. “ ‘My heart is as cold as Ike’ doesn’t sound right to me. Remember, Aunt Josephine told us bluh liked to think of her husband someplace very hot.”

“That’s true,” Sensible said, remembering. “She said Ike liked the sunshine and so she imagined him someplace sunny.”

“So I think Aunt Bluhsephine meant ‘cold as ice,’ ” Klaus said, circling the word ‘Ike.’ “ ‘Ice’ has a C in it, not a K.”

“Okay, so we have ‘ice’ and ‘unbearable,’ ” Sensible said. “So far this doesn’t mean anything to me.”

“Me neither,” Nick said. “But look at bluh next part. ‘I know your children may not understand the sad life of a dowadger.’ We don't have any children.”

“You’re right,” Klaus said. “I’m not planning to have children until I’m considerably older.”

“So why would Aunt Josephine say ‘your children?’ ” Nick said. “I think she meant ‘you children.’ There’s an R in the message that doesn’t belong there.”

“And—wait,” said Klaus. “Nick, look up ‘dowadger’ in _The Correct Spelling of Every English Bluh That Ever, Ever Existed_.’ ”

“It’s a bluhncy word for widow,” Nick said, flipping through the pages, “but it’s spelled D-O-W-A-G-E-R. Aunt Josephine added an extra D.”

“Those letters spell C-U-R-D,” Sensible said. “That’s an ingredient used in cheese.”

“I don’t think Aunt Josephine bluh talking about cheese,” Klaus said. “There are even more grammbluhtical mistakes. When she wrote, ‘or what would have leaded me to this desperate akt,’ she meant ‘what would have _led_ me.’ L-E-D.”

“And the word ‘act,’ ” Nick added, “is spelled with a C.”

“There are just bluh more,” Klaus said, holding up two fingers. “One, she calls Captain Sham ‘a kind and honorable men,’ when she should have said ‘a kind and honorable man,’ with an A. And in the last sentence, Aunt Josephine wrote, ‘Please think of me kindly even though I’d done this terrible thing.’ According to _The Handbook for Advanced Apostrophe Use_ , she should have written ‘even though I’ve done this terrible thing.’ ‘I’ve,’ spelled with a V-E.”

At that moment, Violet, April, and the youngest Baudelaires entered the library.

“Bluh you take a baking soda bath?” Klaus asked.

“No,” Violet replied. “We couldn’t take a baking soda bath. Aunt Josephine doesn’t have any baking soda, because she never turns on the oven to bake. We just took a regular bath. But that doesn’t matter, Nick. What have you three been doing, in this freezing room? Why have you drawn circles all over Aunt Josephine’s note?”

Klaus held up the note. He had written two words at the bottom. “Curdled Cave.”

“Paneer?” Sunny asked, which probably meant, “Curdled _what_?”

“Curdled Cave,” Nick repeated. “If you take all the letters involved in the grammatical mistakes, that’s what it spells.”

April looked closely at the note. “You’re right,” she said. “Aunt Josephine knew she was making grammatical errors, and she knew we’d spot them. She was leaving us a message, and the message is Curdled—”

An enormous gust of wind interrupted April as it came through the shattered window. Everything rattled wildly around the library as the wind flew through it. The Baudelaire orphans were thrown violently to the ground as a clap of thunder shook the library.

“Let’s get out of here!” Violet shouted over the noise of the thunder, and grabbed her siblings by the hand. They stumbled out the door of the library, shut the door behind them, and stood shivering in the hallway.

“Poor Aunt Josephine,” April said. “Her library is wrecked.”

“But we need to go back in there,” Klaus said, holding up the note. “We just found out what Aunt Josephine means by Curdled Cave, and we need a library to find out more.”

“Not that library,” Violet said. “All that library had were books on grammar. We need her books on Lake Lachrymose. Remember, she said she knew every island in its waters and every cave on its shore. I bet Curdled Cave is one of those caves.”

“But why would her secret message be about some cave?” Sensible asked.

“You’ve been so busy figuring out the message,” Violet said, “that you don’t understand what it means. Aunt Josephine isn’t dead. She just wants people to think she’s dead. But she wanted to tell us that she was hiding. We have to find her books on Lake Lachrymose and find out where Curdled Cave is.”

“But first we have to know where the books are,” Nick said. “She told us she hid them away, remember?”

“She has a safe,” April said, “full of things she doesn’t want to look at anymore.”

With difficulty, she pushed open the library door and darted inside. Her siblings followed her. She pulled back the tallest bookshelf to reveal Aunt Josephine’s safe. She quickly entered the combination, and the safe swung open. Photographs and letters spilled out of the safe and went swirling into the freezing cold air.

Nick poked his head into the safe and looked inside.

“There are pots and pans in here,” he said, “and ugly socks. A framed photograph of Ike. But no books on Lake Lachrymose.”

“What?” said April. “That’s not possible.”

Solitude handed the newspaper and note to April. “Under the bed.”

“What’s that?” Violet asked, looking at the note.

“Stay away from open windows,” April read aloud.

“Ventana,” Solitude said, which probably meant, “That’s why we didn’t climb out the window.”

“Avoid suspicious foods in restaurants,” April went on.

“Kloun,” Solitude said, which probably meant, “That’s why we didn’t order the Extra Fun Special Family Appetizer.”

“Check carefully under the bed,” April finished. “That’s where Aunt Josephine’s books on Lake Lachrymose must be. Under the bed.”

The children ran down the hallway to Aunt Josephine’s room and dove underneath the bed, where a stack of books was lying neatly.

Nick grabbed the book at the top of the pile. “ _A Lachrymose Atlas_ ,” he said. “That’s perfect! An atlas is a book of maps!”

“This book is over six hundred pages long,” Violet said. “It’ll take forever to find Curdled Cave.”

“We don’t have forever,” April said. “Captain Sham is probably on his way here now.”

“Use the index in the back,” Klaus said.

Nick flipped to the index and ran his finger down the list of the C words. “Carp Cove, Chartreuse Island, Cloudy Cliffs, Condiment Bay, Curdled Cave—here it is! Curdled Cave, page 551.”

He flipped to the correct page. “Curdled Cave, Curdled Cave, where is it?”

“There it is!” April pointed at a tiny spot on the map. “Directly across from Damocles Dock and just west of the Lavender Lighthouse. Let’s go.”

“Go?” Sensible repeated.

“How will we get across the lake?” Klaus asked.

“The Fickle Ferry will take us,” Violet said, pointing at a dotted line on the map. “Look, the ferry goes right to the Lavender Lighthouse, and we can walk from there.”

“We’re going to walk to Damocles Dock, in all this rain?” Nick asked. “Sounds fun.”

“We don’t have any choice,” said Violet. “We have to prove that Aunt Josephine is still alive, or else Captain Sham gets us.”

The children hurried out of Aunt Josephine’s bedroom. The house was rocking wildly, and they could barely keep their balance as they ran downstairs. But as soon as they entered the kitchen, the Baudelaire orphans knew that they couldn’t leave the house that way. All the windows had blown open, and rain was pouring inside. Aunt Josephine’s plates and teacups had fallen from the cabinets and had shattered on the floor. A piece of the ceiling crashed down onto the tiled floor, just inches from where Sensible was standing.

Violet wrenched open a side door. “This way!”

The seven children crammed themselves inside the tiny room. Nick looked around. The room was filled with black-and-white photographs, like the ones in Aunt Josephine’s album. These photographs were hanging from thin wires that crisscrossed across the ceiling. The photographs showed scenes of smoke and ash. Tacked to the walls were dozens of newspaper clippings. Some of them looked very old indeed, but one article looked like it had been pinned very recently.

“Fire!” the headline said in bold block letters.

“She was investigating fires,” Nick said. “Violet—”

“Nick, duck!” April shouted.

He threw himself to the ground, seconds before the refrigerator hurtled through the open door and crashed into the far wall, tangled in wires and photographs. Nick struggled to his feet, gaping at the refrigerator.

“That could have crushed us flat!”

A bolt of lightning lit up the room. The small radiator in the corner burst into flame. Within seconds, every newspaper article on the wall was burning, filling the room with thick, choking smoke.

“We have to get out of here!” Klaus made his way to the door, coughing.

“Get back, Klaus!” Violet cried, just as another bolt of lightning struck. Unable to bear the heat, the doorknob shattered, splintering into a million pieces. April screamed and covered her head. The house gave another lurch, and the Baudelaires fell to the ground. For several seconds they lay still, as the house continued to rock and the wind continued to wail, until finally it all stopped.

Sensible cautiously lifted her head. “Is it over?”

Nick looked around the house—or, what was left of it. The walls and ceiling had been blown away in the hurricane, and the room had broken away from the cliff. The floor was now held up above Lake Lachrymose only by a single beam, and it was swaying slightly. He held _A Lachrymose Atlas_ close to his chest.

“A library is like an island in a vast sea of ignorance,” he murmured.

Klaus stood up and adjusted his glasses. “Particularly if the library is tall,” he said, “and the surrounding area has been flooded.”

“Violet, April,” Nick said, “you’d better tie your hair up.”

Violet regarded their situation. It didn’t look good. “April,” she said, “bring me that fire extinguisher. We need to move this anchor over there.”

It took all seven Baudelaire children to move the anchor, which was almost as tall as and Sensible and much heavier. Eventually they managed to get the anchor on top of the fire extinguisher, which had an eye symbol engraved into it.

“On three,” Violet said, “we’re going to break that beam.”

Nick stared at her. “ _Break_ it? But that’s the only thing keeping us up!”

“Exactly.”

“Are you sure you tied your hair tight enough?”

“On three,” Violet said, ignoring him. She grabbed the anchor with both hands. “One, two, three!”

The anchor rolled off the edge of the floor and down toward the lake. With a resounding crash, it split the beam in two. The floor lurched backwards. Violet tried not to panic as she wondered if she had miscalculated, and they would all tip backward into Lake Lachrymose and fall to their deaths.

Then the floor began to sway forward, in the direction of the cliff.

“Jump!” Violet cried.

The Baudelaire orphans jumped, landing on solid ground just as the rest of the house crumbled away. As the children watched, Aunt Josephine’s house toppled into Lake Lachrymose. The whole building fell down, down, down, and hit the dark and stormy waters of the lake below.


	23. "Doesn't This Day Just Keep Getting Better?"

“We need a taxi,” Colin said.

Lilac didn’t speak to him. She kept walking through the driving rain, which was pouring down onto her already-soaked clothes.

“I’m sorry,” he repeated for the fifth time. “But we have to get back to Aunt Josephine’s house as soon as possible.”

She started walking faster.

“Lilac, please just _listen to me_!”

She turned around to face him. “Why should I?”

“Because,” he said, “we’re miles away from town, separated from our siblings, and about to be caught in the middle of a hurricane.”

“I don’t care,” she said.

“I’m sorry!” he said again. “How many times will I have to say it? I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry! You were right, I was being unreasonable, I was being stupid, I was being a—”

“Your apologies don’t matter,” she said, “because no matter what you say, we _failed_. Aunt Josephine is still dead.”

“But what if she isn’t?”

Lilac frowned. “I don’t understand.”

“What if Aunt Josephine faked her death?” he said. “She said she knew every island in Lake Lachrymose’s waters and every cave on its shore. What if she threw something heavy through the window, escaped onto a boat, and sailed to an island or cave? She might still be alive.”

Suddenly, they heard a rough and earsplitting noise coming from the faraway cliff. Lilac and Colin turned around just in time to see a bolt of lightning split Aunt Josephine’s house in half. The walls and ceiling came loose from one half of the house. They could see their siblings struggling across the floor, pushing a huge anchor off the edge.

Colin stared. “What are they _doing_?”

“They’re going to break the beam,” Lilac said. “Their half of the house will tip forward, and they’ll be able to jump back onto the cliff.”

He peered up at Aunt Josephine’s crumbling house, which was a long, long way from where he and Lilac were standing. “What if Aunt Josephine is with them?”

“If she is,” Lilac said, “then we have to get back to the house.”

“How? We’re too far away to walk back there in time.”

“We don’t have to walk,” she said. “We can sail. The Fickle Ferry can take us. I just hope it isn’t closed because of the rain.”

“Wait,” Colin said as they began to walk in the direction of the ferry. “Are we… okay?”

It took several seconds for Lilac to respond.

“We’re okay, if Aunt Josephine is,” she said. “But if we sail all this way, and it turns out Aunt Josephine is dead, I’ll kill you.”

* * *

“The Fickle Ferry leaves every seventeen minutes to the Lavender Lighthouse, where tourists can walk to Curdled Cave or bask in the lighthouse’s pale purple glow, weather permitting.” Lilac read aloud from the sign on the closed gate. “What does that mean?”

“It means,” Colin said, “the _fucking_ ferry isn’t running at all!”

“Colin!”

“I’m thirteen,” he told her. “I’m allowed to say it.”

“That rule has never existed!”

“What rule?” a voice called out from behind them.

Lilac and Colin turned around and squinted through the rain, hardly believing their eyes. Running toward the dock were their siblings, soaked to the skin. They were running as if their lives depended on it, which was probably true, since Hurricane Herman had just destroyed their only home and was likely to come after them next.

April reached the dock first. She threw her arms around Colin, and he hugged her back as tightly as he could. She cried into his shoulder, and he might have cried too, although he wasn’t sure if tears or raindrops were running down his face. It was most likely a mixture of both.

She lifted her head from his shoulder.

“Do you know how worried I was?” she shouted over the wind. “I thought you were dead!”

“According to Lilac, I might be soon,” he said. “Please tell me Aunt Josephine is with you.”

“She’s hiding in Curdled Cave,” she said. “We can get there on the Fickle Ferry.”

He shook his head. “The Fickle Ferry is closed.”

“What?” Klaus cried. “How will we get to Curdled Cave now?”

“We’ll have to wait until it opens,” Violet replied.

“But it won’t open until the storm is past,” April said, “and by then Captain Sham will find us and take us far away. We have to get to Aunt Josephine as soon as possible.”

“I don’t know how we can,” Nick said. “The atlas says that the cave is all the way across the lake, and we can’t _swim_ all that way in this weather.”

“Entro!” Sunny shrieked, which probably meant, “And we don’t have enough time to walk around the lake, either.”

“There must be other boats on this lake,” Klaus said, “besides the ferry. Motorboats, or fishing boats, or…”

“Or sailboats,” Nick finished. “Captain Sham’s Sailboat Rentals. He said it was right on Damocles Dock. And we’re standing on Damocles Dock.”

The Baudelaires looked to their right, where a locked gate and a small shack sat tidily on the dock. The children looked at each other with dread.

“Walking into Captain Sham’s Sailboat Rentals in order to find Aunt Josephine,” Lilac said, “feels like walking into a lion’s den in order to escape from a lion.”

“We can’t go there,” Klaus said resolutely.

“We have to,” Violet said. “We know Captain Sham isn’t there, because he’s either on his way to Aunt Josephine’s house or still at The Anxious Clown.”

“You went to The Anxious Clown?” Colin said. “How much did we miss?”

“A lot,” April replied. “And there’s no way that whoever is in the shack will let us rent a sailboat.”

“They won’t know we’re the Baudelaires,” said Lilac. “We’ll tell whoever it is that we’re the… Jones children and that we want to go for a sail.”

“They won’t believe we’re going for a sail in the middle of a hurricane,” Colin said.

Nick shrugged. “ _I_ would.”

“Stop.” Violet looked around and did a head count. Then she did a leg count, in case she had missed the heads of the smaller Baudelaires. They were three orphans and six legs short. “We have a small problem.”

Horror dawned on Lilac’s face. “The babies?”

“The babies.”

“All three of them?”

Violet nodded. “Doesn’t this day just keep getting better and better?”

* * *

While the older Baudelaires argued over whether or not to rent a sailboat from Captain Sham’s Sailboat Rentals, Sensible decided to take matters into her own hands. While Lilac’s back was turned, she led Solitude and Sunny toward the shack. Soon the three of them were shivering underneath the sign that read, “Captain Sham’s Sailboat Rentals: Every Boat Has It’s Own Sail.” But the gate was locked up tight, and the door was open just a crack.

“Let’s take a look,” Sensible whispered, pointing to a window.

She bent down low to the ground, letting Solitude climb onto her shoulders and Sunny onto Solitude’s shoulders. She then slowly and carefully stood up until she was standing on tiptoe, at the bottom of a wobbly baby stack. The youngest Baudelaires had rehearsed this move many times before, and they knew from experience that the stack would collapse after only a few seconds. So Sunny wasted no time peering into the window of the shack, and with one glance she knew there was no way they could rent a sailboat. Sitting at the desk was the henchperson of indeterminate gender, snoring away with a ring of keys in their hand.

The stack collapsed, and Sunny landed with a bump onto the cold, wet dock.

“Shomer,” she told her sisters, which probably meant, “One of Count Olaf’s associates is in the shack.”

“Which one?” Sensible asked.

“Keith,” Sunny said, which probably meant, “The one of indeterminate gender. They’re asleep and holding a ring of keys.”

“We’ll need those keys to unlock the gate and get a sailboat,” Sensible said.

“Robber?” Solitude said, which probably meant, “You mean we’re going to steal a sailboat?”

“No choice,” Sensible replied. “We have to get to Curdled Cave as quickly as possible, and the only way we can do it is to steal a sailboat. Can we fit through the window?”

“Under the door,” Solitude said. She pointed at the door to the shack. Sunny was crawling through the open door of the shack, flattening her little body enough so as not to open the door any wider.

Sensible and Solitude rushed back to the window. If they both stood on their tiptoes and Solitude stood on Sensible’s head, Solitude could just barely see into the shack. She watched as Sunny crawled very slowly toward the henchperson, reached toward the key ring, and pried it loose from their hand.

“Made it!” she cried, just as a boom of thunder threw the window open. Rain poured into the shack, and the henchperson of indeterminate gender blinked awake. Solitude fell to the ground.

“Mayday!” she shrieked. “Mayday!”

Sensible grabbed her younger sister’s hand and ran straight for the door. No longer caring about being seen, she pushed the door fully open and charged at the henchperson. Without really thinking about what she was doing, she pulled out her deck of cards and threw it to the ground. The cards scattered across the wet floor. As the henchperson got up from their chair, they slipped on the ace of clubs, hit their head on the desk, and fell unconscious to the floor.

The older Baudelaires rushed into the shack to find their missing siblings. Sensible was collecting her cards from the ground, Solitude was watching over the henchperson to make sure they didn’t wake up, and Sunny was holding a ring of keys triumphantly in her teeth. The older Baudelaires stared at the scene, stunned and confused and, admittedly, quite impressed.

“I feel rather bad for them,” April said, looking down at the henchperson’s sleeping figure. “I wonder if they ever question their life choices.”

“ _I_ don’t feel bad,” Nick said. “They’re the scariest of Count Olaf’s theater troupe.”

“I disagree,” Violet said. “I think the bald one is scariest.”

“Vass!” Sunny whispered, which probably meant, “Let’s discuss this at another time.”

She held up the ring of keys.

“Oh, Sunny.” Klaus put his head in his hands. “I have a skeleton key, remember?”

* * *

“Do you even know how to sail?” Sensible asked.

“I know how to sail!” Lilac said, uncoiling a rope. She had no idea what it was used for.

Sensible turned to her other sister. “Violet?”

Violet sighed. “I have a… vague idea of how a sailboat works, yes.”

“I read a book about working a sailboat,” Colin shouted as he struggled with the heavy sail. “We have to use the sail to catch the wind. Then it will push us where we want to go.”

“And this lever is called a tiller,” April said. “I remember it from studying some naval blueprints. I think if I pull on this rope, I can control the sail.”

“I can’t make heads or tails of this map,” Nick said, squinting at the damp pages of the atlas. “We could really use a graphologist.”

“I think you mean a cartographer.” Klaus looked closely at the map, then at the orange sky. “Turn the tiller to the right, April,” he said. “The sun is setting over there, so that must be west.”

The rain whipped around the nine Baudelaires, and the wind howled, and a small wave splashed over the side, but to the orphans’ amazement, the sailboat moved in the exact direction they wanted it to go.

Nick laughed in surprise. “It’s working!”

A half hour later, the storm had broken, and the Baudelaires saw the pale purple light of the Lavender Lighthouse. Lilac climbed to the top of the prow and stood there, the wind whipping her hair around her face.

“Look!” she shouted. “The Lavender Lighthouse!”

Violet put a hand on her forehead to shield her eyes. “I’ve always thought lavender was a rather sickly color.”

Colin looked out at the lake, which was reflecting the reds and oranges of the setting sun.

“Lake Lachrymose is actually very pretty,” he said thoughtfully. “I never noticed it before.”

“I guess we never noticed it because of Aunt Josephine,” Lilac said. “We got used to looking at the lake through her eyes.”

The sailboat drew closer and closer to the mouth of Curdled Cave, and Violet jumped out to drag the sailboat onto the craggy shore. The Baudelaires got out of the boat and stood nervously at the mouth of the cave. In front of the cave was a “For Sale” sign, and the Baudelaires wondered who would want to buy such a phantasmagorical place. Before they passed through the entrance, they heard a high-pitched, eerie wail. It was the kind of sound that would come from a ghost.

“What is that sound?” Lilac asked nervously.

“Just the wind, probably,” Colin said. “I read somewhere that when wind passes through small spaces, like caves, it can make weird noises. It’s nothing to be afraid of.”

“I’m afraid of it anyway.”

“Me too.”

The Baudelaire children stared at the jagged mouth of the cave, each of them too afraid to step forward into the darkness.

“Geni,” Sunny said, which probably meant, “We didn’t sail a stolen sailboat across Lake Lachrymose in the middle of Hurricane Herman just to stand nervously at the mouth of a cave.”

She crawled into the mouth of the cave, and her siblings followed her inside. They found the source of the wailing right away. It was Aunt Josephine, sitting in a corner of the cave and sobbing with her head in her hands.

“Aunt Josephine,” Klaus said hesitantly, “we’re here.”

Aunt Josephine looked up and gave the children a teary smile. “You figured it out,” she said, wiping her eyes and standing up. “I knew you could figure it out.”

“Oh, Aunt Josephine,” Lilac cried. She wrapped her arms around her guardian, crying almost as hard as Aunt Josephine was. “I can’t believe you’re alive. I was so… so afraid.”

“I knew you were clever children,” Aunt Josephine said. “I knew you would read my message. Let me just catch my breath and I’ll help you bring in your things.”

The children looked at one another. “What things?” Violet asked.

“Why, your luggage, of course,” Aunt Josephine replied. “And I hope you brought some food, because the supplies I brought are almost gone.”

“We didn’t bring any food,” Klaus said.

“No food? How in the world are you going to live with me in this cave if you didn’t bring any food?”

“We didn’t come here to live with you,” Nick said. “We came here because we were worried about you and Captain Sham almost had us in his clutches.”

“Everyone thought you were dead,” April explained, “and you wrote in your will and testament that we should be placed in the care of Captain Sham.”

“But he forced me to do that,” said Aunt Josephine. “We were only halfway through our fried-egg sandwiches when he told me he was really Count Olaf. He said I had to write out a will saying you children would be left in his care. He said if I didn’t write what he said, he would drown me in the lake. I was so frightened that I agreed immediately.”

“Why didn’t you call the police?” Lilac asked. “Why didn’t you call Mr. Poe? Why didn’t you call somebody who could have helped?”

“You know why,” Aunt Josephine said crossly.

Klaus nodded knowingly. “The authorities are never any help.”

“Oh, no,” she said. “I’m afraid of using the telephone. Why, I was just getting used to answering it. I’m nowhere near ready to use the numbered buttons. But in any case, I didn’t need to call anybody. I threw a footstool through the window and then sneaked out of the house. I left you the note so that you would know I wasn’t really dead, but I hid my message so that Captain Sham wouldn't know I had escaped from him.”

“Why didn’t you take us with you?” Nick asked, his voice rising in volume. “Why did you leave us all alone by ourselves? Why didn’t you protect us from Captain Sham? Are you more concerned with grammatical mistakes than with saving the lives of nine children? Are you so wrapped up your own fears that you didn’t care about what might have happened to _us_?”

“Now, Nick,” said Aunt Josephine, “I think you’re being unreasonable.”

“I wish our parents were here,” he told her. “They never would have run away and left us alone.”

Aunt Josephine took a couple of steps backward when she heard that. Her hand flew to her mouth, and her eyes filled with tears again.

“Your parents were such brave people,” she said. “I’m not like them.”

Lilac approached Aunt Josephine. She placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. “You don’t have to be,” she said. “But we’re sailing back to town, and we’re taking you with us.”

“No way, José,” Aunt Josephine said. “I’m too frightened of Captain Sham to face him. After all he’s done to you, I would think that you would be frightened of him, too.”

“We _are_ frightened of him,” April said, “but if we prove that he’s really Count Olaf, he’ll go to jail. _You_ are the proof. If you tell Mr. Poe what happened, then Count Olaf will be locked away and we’ll be safe.”

“You can tell him, if you want to,” Aunt Josephine said. “I’m staying here.”

“He won’t believe us unless you come with us and prove that you’re alive,” Klaus said.

“No, no, no,” she said. “I’m too afraid.”

Lilac took a deep breath. “We’re _all_ afraid,” she said, and glanced at Violet. “We were afraid when we met Captain Sham at the market, and we were afraid when we thought that you had jumped out the window.”

“We were afraid to give ourselves allergic reactions,” Violet continued, “and we were afraid to steal a sailboat, and we were afraid to make our way across this lake in the middle of a hurricane. But that didn't stop us.”

“I can't help it that you’re braver than I am,” Aunt Josephine said. “I’m not sailing across that lake. I’m not making any telephone calls. I’m going to stay right here for the rest of my life, and nothing you can say will change my mind.”

Colin stepped forward, adjusting his glasses. “Curdled Cave,” he said, “is for sale.”

“So what?”

Nick smiled, knowing exactly what Colin was thinking. “That means,” he said, “that before long, certain people will come to look at it. And some of those people… will be realtors.”

Aunt Josephine gasped nervously. She swallowed in fear. The Baudelaire orphans waited for her response.

“Okay,” she said finally, looking around the cave anxiously. “I’ll go.”


	24. "There’s Nothing At All You Can Do"

“Oh no,” Aunt Josephine murmured as they sailed across Lake Lachrymose. “Oh no, oh no, oh no…”

“Aunt Josephine?” April took a damp newspaper clipping from the inside of her coat, hoping it would distract Aunt Josephine from her fears. “Have you seen this before?”

Aunt Josephine gasped and took the clipping from April. “I haven’t seen this in years. Where did you find this?”

“In the library,” April said, too embarrassed to tell her that she had broken into her safe. “It mentions you and Ike, as well as our parents. I don’t understand how our parents would be connected to royalty.”

“Your parents,” Aunt Josephine said, “were such brave and noble people. They wanted to raise you in a quiet world, far away from the fiery injustices that were threatening all of us. They were trying to keep you safe.”

“Newitt,” Sunny mumbled to herself, which probably meant, “I knew our parents wouldn’t have wanted me to leave with that the woman in the taxi.”

“It wasn’t meant to be,” Aunt Josephine went on. “Not long after this article was published, your mother had to make a vastly frightening decision. I remember that day so well. I proofread the two hundred-page letter she sent to—”

Her face went white. “Oh no,” she said. “We’re about to enter the territory of the Lachrymose Leeches.”

“I’m sure we’ll pass through safely,” Lilac said. “You told us that the leeches were harmless and only preyed on small fish.”

“Unless you’ve eaten recently,” Aunt Josephine said.

“But it’s been hours since we’ve eaten,” Klaus said. “The last thing we ate were peppermints at The Anxious Clown. That was in the afternoon, and now it’s the evening.”

“But I ate a banana,” Aunt Josephine whispered, “just before you arrived.”

Violet gulped. “Oh no.”

“I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about,” Lilac said, although she sounded less convinced this time.

“Leeches are very small animals,” Colin said. “If we were in the water, we might have reason to fear, but I don’t think they’d attack a sailboat.”

“Plus, Hurricane Herman might have frightened them away from their territory,” Nick added. “I bet the Lachrymose Leeches won’t even show up—oh, holy _shit_!”

“Nick!” Lilac and Aunt Josephine both shouted at once.

As the Baudelaires watched, hundreds of skinny black shapes emerged from the water and wriggled toward the sailboat. The Lachrymose Leeches made a quiet, whispering sound on the water as they swarmed the boat, tapping at the wood with their suctioned mouths.

_Thwack!_ The leeches hit the boat all at once, and a crack appeared in the bottom of the boat. Aunt Josephine shrieked and clung to Lilac.

“We have to sail much faster,” April said, “or this boat will be in pieces in no time.”

“But sailing relies on the wind,” Violet pointed out. “We can’t make the wind go faster.”

“Sensible, Solitude, Sunny,” Lilac said, “bail out the water as best as you can.”

“I’m frightened!” Aunt Josephine cried. “Please don’t throw me overboard!”

“Nobody’s going to throw you overboard,” Nick said impatiently, “although frankly, I’d like to. We can sail faster if we use the oars.”

April shook her head, looking at the widening crack. “Rowing isn’t going to work,” she said. “This boat is sinking. We need help.”

“Where can we get help,” Nick shouted, “in the middle of a _lake_?”

“We’re going to have to signal for help," Violet said, tying up her hair. She closed her eyes, concentrating.

“That’s right,” Aunt Josephine said to Violet. “Close your eyes. That’s what I do when I’m afraid, and it always makes me feel better to block out the fear.”

“She’s not blocking out anything,” Colin said. “She’s concentrating.”

Violet opened her eyes. Without warning, she violently ripped the sail from the mast and grabbed Nick’s oar out of his hands. She held the oar perpendicular to the mast.

“One, two, three,” she whispered.

She swung the oar directly into the mast. The oar splintered in two. Violet placed the sail in between the two pieces of oar and began rubbing the wood together.

“I’m trying to create friction,” she explained. “If I rub two pieces of wood enough, I’ll create friction. Friction creates sparks. When I get a spark, I’ll set the cloth on fire and use it as a signal.”

“You want to set a fire?” said Sensible. “The oar is too wet.”

Violet threw the pieces of wood down with a splash. “It’s not working!” she cried. “We need a fire, but I can’t invent one.”

“There’s always something,” Lilac said. “Colin, Klaus, give me your glasses.”

“Why?”

“Just do it!”

Klaus handed Lilac his glasses, and she held them up towards the setting sun. Nothing happened.

“What are you doing?” Colin asked.

“Remember the story Father used to tell us?” she said. “When he was younger, he’d had a dreadful cousin who liked to burn ants, starting a fire by focusing the light of the sun with his magnifying glass.”

Aunt Josephine nodded. “Count Olaf.”

“And remember,” Lilac continued, tilting the lenses this way and that, “what happened at _The Marvelous Marriage_? You and April set the stage on fire using the lens of the spyglass and—”

“—the rays of the sun,” April finished. “You’re trying to use the scientific principles of the convergence and refraction of light. That won’t work.”

Lilac put down the glasses. “Why?”

“Because Colin and Klaus are nearsighted,” April explained. “The lenses are curved the wrong way. Nick is farsighted, so we could have used his glasses. Unfortunately, he doesn’t have his glasses.”

“It’s not my fault,” said Nick, “that my glasses _exploded in a fire_.”

“We need a converging lens,” April said, “like a microscope or a pair of binoculars.”

“The spyglass,” Colin murmured. “We can use the spyglass.”

He hastily grabbed the spyglass and gave it to April, who tilted the lens at an angle she hastily computed in her head. The sunlight passed through the lens and landed directly on the cloth of the sail. In just a few seconds, the sail caught fire.

“See?” April said. “I’m improving.”

Using a fishing rod, Nick held the flaming sail up high. Almost immediately, a nearby ship changed course and began heading in the direction of their boat. For a moment, the Baudelaires thought they were saved. But then they saw who was steering the ship. It was a man with a wooden peg leg, a navy-blue sailor cap, and an eye patch, and the Baudelaire orphans now knew that he liked to burn ants for fun.

“Welcome aboard,” Captain Sham said, grinning as the children stepped onto his ship. “I’m happy to see you all. I thought you had been killed when the old lady’s house fell into the lake, but luckily my associate told me you had stolen a boat and run away. And you, Josephine—I thought you’d done the sensible thing and jumped out the window.”

“I would _never_ do that,” Sensible objected.

“Aren’t you going to say thank you, orphans?” Captain Sham asked. “If it weren’t for me, all of you would be divided up into the stomachs of those leeches.”

“If it weren’t for you,” said April, “we wouldn’t be in Lake Lachrymose to begin with.”

“You can blame that on the old woman,” he said. “Faking your own death was pretty clever, but not clever enough. The Baudelaire fortune—and, unfortunately, the brats who come with it—now belong to me.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Lilac said. “We don’t belong to you and we never will. Once we tell Mr. Poe what happened, he’ll send you to jail.”

“Mr. Poe won’t believe you,” Captain Sham said, chuckling. “Why should he believe three runaway pipsqueaks who go around stealing boats?”

“We only stole that boat,” Colin said, “to retrieve Aunt Josephine from her hiding spot so she could tell everybody about your terrible plan.”

Captain Sham blinked in surprise. “Is this true?” he asked Aunt Josephine. “You were going to betray me? After all the years we spent together? After all of those picnics by the shore? After all of those shredded beef tamales I served to your husband? After all the secrets we had shared?”

Aunt Josephine looked nervously at the Baudelaire children. She took a deep breath. Then she stood up, very straight and tall, and she looked like the fierce and formidable woman she had once been.

“Yes!” she said. “I was going to betray you, and these nine children gave me the courage to do so. Ever since their parents were killed, they have been so fierce and formidable, again and again escaping from your clutches. And what have I done all these years? Nothing but hide in my house. Well, enough of that. My house can topple off a cliff for all I care. I am ready to be fierce and formidable again myself, and to face you, _Count Olaf_. I have had enough of your schemes. I have had enough of your plots. I have had enough of your greed and your betrayal. Listen to me, you villain, you wretch, you vastly untalented actor. I’m going to tell you something I should have told you a long time ago.”

He scoffed. “And what might that be?”

“It’s ‘have!’ ” she cried. “You said, ‘After all the secrets we _had_ shared.’ You should have said, ‘After all the secrets we _have_ shared.’ You made a serious grammatical error.”

His mouth twisted into a scowl. “Thank you for pointing that out,” he said. “Let me make sure I understand. “Let me make sure I completely understand the grammatical lesson. You wouldn’t say, ‘Josephine Anwhistle _had_ been thrown overboard to the leeches,’ because that would be incorrect. But if you said, ‘Josephine Anwhistle _has_ been thrown overboard to the leeches,’ that would be all right with you.”

“Yes,” Aunt Josephine said. “I mean, no. I mean—”

But Aunt Josephine never got to say what she meant. Captain Sham faced her, placed his hands on her shoulders, and pushed her over the side of the boat.

* * *

“You’re safe! Thank goodness!”

Mr. Poe wiped his forehead with his handkerchief, then coughed into it several times. The Baudelaire children had been rescued and were standing on Damocles Dock, but they were anything but safe. Lilac, in particular, was shaking so hard that she seemed likely to tip over at any moment. Aunt Josephine’s death had shocked all of them, but it had rattled Lilac the most out of them all.

“We were so worried about you,” Mr. Poe said. When Captain Sham and I reached the Anwhistle home and saw that it had fallen into the sea, we thought you were done for.”

“It’s lucky my associate told me that they had stolen a sailboat,” Captain Sham said. “The boat was nearly destroyed by Hurricane Herman, and by a swarm of leeches. I rescued them just in time.”

“He did _not_!” April shouted. “He threw Aunt Josephine into the lake! We have to go and rescue her!”

“The children are upset and confused,” Captain Sham said. “As their father, I think they need a good night’s sleep.”

“He’s not our father!” Klaus shouted. “He’s Count Olaf, and he’s a murderer! Please, Mr. Poe, do _something_ for once. We have to save Aunt Josephine.”

“You certainly are confused, Klaus,” said Mr. Poe. “Aunt Josephine is dead, remember? She threw herself out the window.”

“No, no,” April said. “Her suicide note had a secret message in it. Nick and Klaus decoded the note, and it said ‘Curdled Cave.’ Actually, it said ‘apostrophe Curdled Cave,’ but the apostrophe was just to get our attention.”

“You’re not making any sense. What cave? What apostrophe?” Mr. Poe said. “You need a good night’s sleep. Jacquelyn will take you to my home while I stay here and finish the adoption paperwork with Mr. Poe.”

“But—”

“But nothing,” Captain Sham said. “You’re very distraught, which means ‘upset.’ ”

“We _know_ what ‘distraught’ means,” Colin said. “Please listen to us. It’s a matter of life or death. Please just take a look at the note.”

“If it upsets you so much,” Mr. Poe said reluctantly, “I’ll take a look at the note. It will only take a moment.”

“Thank you,” Klaus said in relief. He reached into his pocket for the note, but only pulled out a damp lump. He looked at it in dismay.

“This _was_ the note,” he said, holding it out to Mr. Poe. “You’ll just have to take our word for it that Aunt Josephine was still alive.”

“And she might _still_ be alive!” April cried. “Please, Mr. Poe, send someone to rescue her!”

“Oh my, children,” Mr. Poe said. “You’re so sad and worried. But you don’t have to worry anymore. I have always promised to provide for you, and I think Captain Sham will do an excellent job of raising you. He has a steady business and doesn’t seem likely to throw himself out of a window. And it’s obvious he cares for you very much—why, he went out alone, in the middle of a hurricane, to search for you.”

“The only thing he cares about is our fortune,” said Violet. “Please, Mr. Poe, why don’t you ever believe us?”

Mr. Poe opened his mouth to respond, but before he could do so, he was interrupted by an loud crack. Captain Sham yelped in alarm. Sunny had bitten his peg leg as hard as she could, and the leg split right in half to reveal Captain Sham’s real leg.

“Gordium,” Sunny said proudly, pointing at the eye tattoo on Count Olaf’s ankle.

Count Olaf first looked afraid, but he quickly made himself look astonished.

“My leg!” he cried. “My leg has grown back! It’s amazing! It’s wonderful! It’s a medical miracle!”

“Oh come now,” Mr. Poe said, folding his arms. “That won’t work. Even a child can see that your peg leg was false.”

“A child _did_ see it,” Violet said. “Nine children, in fact.”

“Well, maybe the peg leg was false,” Count Olaf admitted. “But I’ve never seen this tattoo in my life.”

“That won’t work, either,” Mr. Poe said. “You tried to hide the tattoo with the peg leg, but now we can see that you’re really Count Olaf.”

“Well, maybe the tattoo is mine, but I’m not this Count Olaf person. I’m Captain Sham. See, I have a business card here that says so.”

Mr. Poe scoffed. “Anyone can go to a print shop and have cards made that say anything they like.”

“Well, maybe I’m not Captain Sham,” Count Olaf said, “but the children still belong to me. Josephine said that they did.”

“Aunt Josephine left the children to Captain Sham, not to Count Olaf,” Mr. Poe said. “And you are Count Olaf, not Captain Sham. So it’s once again up to me to decide who will care for the Baudelaires.”

Nick sighed and looked up at the sky. “This time, God,” he whispered, “can you _please_ give Mr. Poe a turn on the brain cell a little bit earlier?”

“That’s enough of your revolting talk, Count Olaf. I will send these three children somewhere else, and I will send you to jail,” Mr. Poe was saying. “The Lake Lachrymose Police Department will be happy to capture a known criminal wanted for fraud, murder, and the endangerment of children.”

“And arson,” Count Olaf added.

“I said, _that’s enough_ ,” Mr. Poe growled. “You’ve preyed upon these children for the last time, and I’m making absolutely sure that you are handed over to the proper authorities. Disguising yourself won’t work. Telling lies won't work. In fact, there’s nothing at all you can do about your situation.”

“Really?” Count Olaf said, smiling. “ _I_ can think of something that I can do.”

“And what is that?”

“I can run,” Count Olaf said, and ran, disappearing into the fog that blanketed Lake Lachrymose.

“Get back here!” Mr. Poe shouted. “Get back here in the name of the law! Get back here in the name of justice and righteousness! Get back here in the name of Mulctuary Money Management!”

“We can’t just shout at him!” Violet shouted. “Come on! We have to chase him!”

“I’m not going to allow children to chase after a man like that,” Mr. Poe said. “Wait here while I alert the authorities.”

Mr. Poe ran off toward town, leaving the nine Baudelaires alone on the dock. It was too late for the children to run after Count Olaf. He was already gone.

“What happens now?” Klaus asked.

“We’ll go to our next guardian,” Lilac said quietly, “and then they’ll die.”

Violet turned to Lilac, who was trembling.

“You can’t think like that, L.,” she said. “We have to believe that we’ll be safe one day. You said it yourself. One day, our lives will be safe and quiet.”

“I’m not so sure anymore,” Lilac whispered. “I don’t know if I have the will to do this another time.”

“We’ll get through it,” Violet told her. “We will.”

Lilac was silent for a long moment. Then she turned away from the dock and looked down at her boots.

“I’m tired,” she whispered, barely louder than the sound of waves lapping against the dock. “I’m _tired_ , and I want to go to bed.”

“Lilac—” Colin started.

“Don’t.” She held up her hand to stop him. “Don’t talk to me.”

Colin sighed. “Well, I’ll be here when you want to talk.”

Violet looked from her siblings—Lilac shivering, Colin helpless—to the dock, to the lonely gray waters of Lake Lachrymose. Despite their unfortunate circumstances, the Baudelaires had always, in some way or another, ended up alright—together, and safe, and more or less in one piece. Violet wondered when their luck would run out. And as she gazed out into the enormous lake, she couldn’t shake the feeling that things were about to go awfully wrong.


	25. "We're Almost Out Of The Woods"

The Baudelaire orphans looked out the grimy window of the train and gazed at the gloomy blackness of the Finite Forest, wondering if their lives would ever get any better.

Klaus leaned his head against the window, half watching at the dreary landscape outside and half watching Lilac, who was absentmindedly bouncing Sunny on her knee. Something about her had changed after Aunt Josephine had died. She seemed tired all the time now, like an engine running on low. It worried him.

It didn’t help that, except when absolutely necessary, she and Colin weren’t speaking to each other either.

“What a lovely forest!” Mr. Poe remarked, and coughed into a white handkerchief. “I think you children will have a good home here. I hope you do, anyway, because I’ve just received a promotion at Mulctuary Money Management. I’m now the Vice President in Charge of Coins, and from now on I’ll be busier than ever. If anything goes wrong with you here, I’ll have to send you to boarding school like those twins did, so please be on your best behavior.”

“Of course, Mr. Poe,” Violet said. “What’s our new caretaker’s name? You haven’t told us.”

Mr. Poe took a piece of paper out of his pocket and squinted at it. “His name is Mr. Wuz—Mr. Qui—I can’t pronounce it. It’s very long and complicated.”

“That’s not long and complicated,” Klaus said, peeking at Mr. Poe’s piece of paper. “It’s two simple words.”

“No, no,” Mr. Poe said, putting the paper away. “If it’s too complicated for an adult, it’s much too complicated for a child.”

“Tolstoi!” Sunny shrieked from Lilac’s lap, which probably meant, “But Klaus reads many complicated books!”

“He’ll tell you what to call him,” Mr. Poe continued. “You’ll find him at the main office of the Lucky Smells Lumbermill, which I’m told is a short walk from the train station.”

“Aren’t you coming with us?” April asked.

“No,” Mr. Poe said, and coughed again into his handkerchief. “The train only stops in Paltryville once a day, so if I got off the train I would have to stay overnight and I’d miss another day at the bank. I’m just dropping you off here and heading right back into the city.”

“But what if Count Olaf shows up?” Nick asked. “He swore he’d find us again.”

“I’ve given Mr. Bek—Mr. Duy—I’ve given your new caretaker a complete description of Count Olaf,” said Mr. Poe. “So if by some stretch of the imagination he shows up in Paltryville, Mr. Sho—Mr. Gek—will notify the authorities. And if there’s any problem, remember you can always contact me or any of my associates at Mulctuary Money Management.”

“Casca,” Solitude said, which probably meant, “That’s not very reassuring.”

“Here we are,” Mr. Poe said as the train stopped in Paltryville Station. He herded the nine children off the train as if he was very eager to get rid of them, and soon enough the Baudelaires were standing alone on the platform.

“Well,” Lilac said, picking up Sunny in one arm and her suitcase in another, “let’s find the Lucky Smells Lumbermill. Then we can meet our new caretaker.”

“Or at least learn his name,” Nick said as they started to walk down a path through the Finite Forest.

April sighed and took a small piece of paper from her raincoat pocket. It was an old photograph, a little worn at the edges and damp from Hurricane Herman. With her finger, she traced the faces of people she had known—first the Baudelaires’ mother and father, then Uncle Monty, and finally Aunt Josephine.

“What’s that?” Colin asked.

“I managed to grab it before Aunt Josephine’s house fell,” April replied. “I know it’s just a picture. But it’s the only photograph we have left of our parents. When I look at it, I don’t miss them quite so badly.”

“Look.” Sensible tugged on Violet’s sleeve. “Smoke.”

Sensible was right. In the distance, two thin columns of smoke were rising from two thin smokestacks, attached to a large wooden building with the words “Lucky Smells Lumbermill” written on it in rough and slimy letters.

“That’s the lumbermill,” said Violet. “We’re almost out of the woods.”

“Wait a second.” Colin took the photograph from April and held it up. Behind the smiling Baudelaire parents, in the background of the photographs, were two thin smokestacks spouting two thin columns of green smoke. It matched perfectly with the lumbermill in the distance.

“No way,” Nick whispered.

The nine Baudelaires approached the tree line cautiously. They emerged onto Paltryville’s one street, which was lined with burnt-out buildings and skeletal trees. A heavy smell of ash hung in the air, and each of the Baudelaire orphans were reminded of their own home, burnt to the ground.

“It looks like there was a fire here,” said Colin, kicking up some ash on the ground with his shoe. “Everything’s gone.”

“Not everything,” said April. “There’s still Lucky Smells Lumbermill.”

At the end of the street was the wall that the orphans had seen from the woods, and they could see the letters that spelled out “Lucky Smells Lumbermill” were made out of wads of chewed-up gum, which made the children recoil in disgust.

“Is _this_ where all the clues lead us?” April asked. “The secret safe and the strange photographs at Aunt Josephine’s? The coded message at Uncle Monty’s? To a bunch of chewed-up gum and an enormous wooden wall?”

“You saw the photograph,” Nick said. “It’s not just any enormous wooden wall. Our _parents_ were here, April. Our new guardian probably knows everything about them. We could find out everything.”

“What if we don’t like what we find?” Klaus asked. “Knowing can be a terrible thing.”

“But not knowing,” Sensible said, “isn’t that worse?”

“Trebuchet?” Solitude asked, which probably meant, “How are we going to get inside?”

“I’ve read about walls,” Nick said. “The Wall of Jericho, the Great Wall of China…”

“Pink Floyd’s _The Wall_ ,” Colin added. “Although Mother wouldn’t let me watch that one.”

April began to tie up her hair. “I bet I could invent a catapult to get us over.”

“We could use that wheelbarrow over there,” said Lilac. “Then all we’d need is a lever, a counterweight, and a very large spoon.”

“Or we could see if the door is unlocked,” Violet said. She gave the wooden door a strong push, and it creaked open. “See? No catapult required.”

Nick pointed at a small sign on the door that read, “Trespassers will be put to work.”

“Does this make us trespassers?”

“We’re children,” said April.

Nick frowned. “Those aren’t mutually exclusive.”

“They wouldn’t put us to work, right?” Colin asked nervously. “I mean, there must be unions and things to prevent that.”

“Plus, we can’t be trespassers,” Lilac said. “The owner of the lumbermill is our new guardian.”

The Baudelaire orphans tentatively stepped across the threshold and looked around. They were in a large courtyard with a dirt floor, and on the dirt floor was an envelope with the word “Baudelaires” typed on the front. Klaus picked up the envelope and read the note inside.

> Enclosed you will find a map of the Lucky Smells Lumbermill, including the dormitory where the nine of you will he staying, free of charge. Please report to work the following morning along with the other employees. The owner of Lucky Smells Lumbermill expects you to be both assiduous and diligent.

“What do those words mean, ‘assiduous’ and ‘diligent?’ ” Lilac asked.

“ ‘Assiduous’ and ‘diligent’ both mean the same thing,” said Klaus. “ ‘Hardworking.’ ”

“But Mr. Poe didn’t say anything about _working_ in the lumbermill,” April said. “I thought we were just going to live here.”

“This map looks pretty easy to read,” Colin said. “The dormitory is straight ahead, between the storage shed and the lumbermill itself.”

Lilac shot Colin a glare. “I don’t want to live,” she said, “between the storage shed and the lumbermill itself.”

“Not to interrupt,” Nick interrupted, “but I think you should see this.”

The Baudelaires turned around, following Nick’s gaze. The nine of them stood there without speaking a word, staring hard at the building next to Lucky Smells Lumbermill. The building had no windows, just a round door in the center. It was shaped like Aunt Josephine’s library, with concentric circles painted on it to look like an eye.

“It must be a coincidence,” Lilac finally said. “That’s all it is, a coincidence.”

Nick shook his head slowly. “This is no coincidence. We should leave.”

* * *

They didn’t leave. Instead, the Baudelaire children made their way to the dormitory, which was a drab gray building, and they knocked on the door. After a long pause, the door creaked open and revealed a confused-looking man who stared at them for quite some time before speaking.

“No one has knocked on this door,” he said finally, “for fifteen years.”

Violet cleared her throat awkwardly. “I’m Violet Baudelaire,” she said. “How are you?”

“Baudelaire,” the man said thoughtfully. “I haven’t heard that name for fifteen years. Are you sure you're in the right place?”

“I think so,” Colin said. “This is the dormitory at the Lucky Smells Lumbermill, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” the man said, “but we’re not allowed to have visitors.”

“We’re not visitors,” April replied. “The owner said we have to work here.”

The man scratched his head. “You’re going to work _here_ , at the Lucky Smells Lumbermill? Children, working in a lumbermill is a very difficult job. I must tell you that the majority of people who work in the lumber business are grown-ups. But if the owner says you’re working here, I guess you’re working here. You’d better come inside.”

The Baudelaires stepped inside the dormitory. It was a large, dimly lit room filled with bunk beds. At least two dozen people in sawdust-covered uniforms were sitting alone on their bunks, staring into space.

“This here is the room where we sleep,” the man said. “There are a few empty bunks over there in the far corner that you nine can share—”

“Excuse me, Phil,” a woman called out, “but did that little girl say she was a Baudelaire?”

A collective gasp rippled through the dormitory. The children looked around, confused.

“The Baudelaires?” one man said. “I hear their folks were arsonists.”

“I hear they were murderers.”

“I hear they checked out library books and never returned them.”

“No, that was that Snicket lad—what was his name?”

“I hear they drank blood from the skulls of chupacabras!” one woman announced.

“That’s ridiculous!” April cried. “Did any of you actually meet our parents?”

“And our parents would _never_ check out library books without returning them,” Klaus added indignantly.

“We noticed some signs of arson,” Colin said. “Do you know anything about what happened to this town?”

“We’re not allowed to talk about that,” a grizzled old man mumbled. “It’s too terrible.”

“Also,” another mill worker added, “we don’t know.”

“Then you shouldn’t be spreading rumors!” said April.

“I never believed those rumors anyway,” said Phil. “So, where are your parents now?”

The Baudelaires looked at one another, not sure how to respond.

“We’re orphans,” Violet finally said.

Phil’s face lit up. “Lucky you!” he said. “The unsupervised life. No rules, no curfews—”

Suddenly, all the lights went out. The dormitory was plunged into darkness.

“Lights out,” a sour voice said over the loudspeaker. “Two minutes.”

Nick frowned. “But it’s only six o’clock.”

“Oh boy,” said Phil. “More time for dreaming!”

* * *

The nine Baudelaire orphans woke up to the unpleasant sound of the foreman banging two metal pots together. They stumbled out of their bunks, rubbing their eyes.

“Get up, you lazy, smelly things!” cried the foreman in an odd-sounding voice. “Time for work, everybody! There’s a new shipment of logs just waiting to be made into lumber!”

“Good morning, Foreman Flacutono,” Phil said to the foreman, smiling. “May I introduce you to your nine newest employees? These are the Baudelaires.”

“I heard we’d have some new workers," the foreman said, dropping the pots to the floor with a clatter, “but nobody told me they’d be _Baudelaires_.”

Foreman Flacutono was wearing stained overalls, and his shoes were taped shut. He wore a curly white wig to hide his bald head, and his eyes were dark and beady. The rest of his face was covered with a cloth mask.

“I don’t understand,” Nick said to Klaus as they put on their lumbermill uniforms. “Why does everyone at this mill have something against our family?”

“The first thing you can do, Baude _liars_ ,” Foreman Flacutono told them, “is pick up my pots. And never make me drop them again.”

“But we didn’t make you drop them,” Colin said.

“If you don’t pick up the pots this instant,” Foreman Flacutono said, “you will get no chewing gum for lunch.”

Although none of the Baudelaire orphans quite understood that threat, they ran to the pots anyway and picked them up.

“Give them to me,” Foreman Flacutono snapped, and grabbed the pots out of their hands. “Now, workers, we’ve wasted enough time already. To the mills! Logs are waiting for us!”

Foreman Flacutono led the mill workers out of the dormitory and to the lumbermill, which. The Baudelaires saw that it was all one huge room, filled with enormous machines. Even Violet, Lilac, and April had never seen machines of this size or strength before, and they stared up at the great metal contraptions, trying to figure out how they worked.

“The logs!” Foreman Flacutono shouted. “Turn on the pincher machine and get started with the logs!”

Phil ran to the pincher machine and pressed an orange button on it. With a rough whistling noise, the pinchers opened, and stretched toward a huge pile of trees that were stacked along one wall of the lumbermill. The pinchers picked up the tree on top of the stack and began lowering it to the ground, near a dusty loudspeaker.

“The debarkers! The debarkers!” Foreman Flacutono shouted.

Another mill worker walked to the back corner of the room, where there were a stack of tiny green boxes and a pile of flat metal rectangles, which she began distributing them to the workers. The children each took a debarker and stood there, confused and hungry, as the mill workers crowded around the tree and began scraping against it with their debarkers.

“You, too, Baudelates!” the foreman shouted, and the children started to scrape away at the tree alongside the adults. They  scraped and scraped all morning, until Foreman Flacutono banged his pots together and shouted, “Lunch break!”

“Thank God,” Nick said, leaning against the debarked tree trunk.

Foreman Flacutono began to toss small pink squares at the workers, one to each.

A pink square hit Nick on the head. “Hey!” he shouted.

“You have five minutes for lunch!” the foreman shouted. “Just five minutes!”

Nick looked down at the pink square in his hand. “This is gum!” he shouted indignantly. “Gum isn’t _lunch_!”

“Gum isn't even a _snack_!” Klaus added.

“Tanco!” Sunny shrieked, which probably meant, “And babies shouldn’t even have gum, because they could choke on it!”

“You’d better eat your gum,” Phil said. “It’s not very filling, but it’s the only thing they’ll let you eat until dinnertime.”

“Well, maybe we can get up a little earlier tomorrow,” Lilac said, “and make some sandwiches.”

“We don’t have any sandwich-making ingredients,” Phil said. “We just get one meal, usually a casserole, every evening.”

“Well, maybe we can go into town and buy some ingredients,” Klaus said.

“I wish we could,” Phil said, “but we don’t have any money.”

“What about your wages?” Violet asked. “Surely you can spend some of the money you earn on sandwich ingredients.”

“At the Lucky Smells Lumbermill,” he replied, “they don’t pay us in money. They pay us in coupons. See, here’s what we all earned yesterday: twenty percent off a shampoo at Sam’s Haircutting Palace. The day before that, we earned this coupon for a free refill of iced tea, and last week we earned this one: ‘Buy Two Banjos and Get One Free.’ The trouble is, we can’t buy two banjos, because we don’t have anything but these coupons.”

“There’s… no way that’s legal,” said Colin.

“It’s not like we have a constitution,” Phil said.

“If this place is so miserable,” Nick said, “why don’t you leave?”

All at once, every worker in the mill stood up. Their eyes glazed over as they recited, “Lucky Smells is our life. Lucky Smells is our home.”

“Lunch is over!” Foreman Flacutono shouted. “Back to work, everyone! Everyone except you, Baudelamps! The boss wants to see you nine in his office right away!”


	26. "What Goes Around Comes Around"

“You must be the Baudelaires.”

A very tall man with very short hair stood outside the lumbermill owner’s office, wearing a bright blue vest and holding a peach. He smiled and walked toward them, but then frowned as he drew closer.

“Why, you’re covered in pieces of bark,” he said. “I hope you haven’t been hanging around the lumbermill. That can be very dangerous for small children.”

“We’ve been working there all morning,” Violet said.

“ _Working_ there?” the man said with alarm.

“Yes,” Klaus said. “We received your instructions and went right to work. Today was a new log day.”

The man scratched his head. “Instructions?” he asked. “What in the world are you talking about?”

“Molub!” Sunny shrieked, which probably meant, “We’re talking about the typed note that told us to go to work at the lumbermill!”

“Well, I don’t understand how nine people as young as yourselves were put to work in the lumbermill,” said the man, “but please accept my humblest apologies, and let me tell you that it will not happen again. If you were trespassers, I’d understand, but you’re only children. You’ll be treated as members of the family!”

“You mean we don't have to debark any more logs?” Sensible asked.

“Of course not,” the man said. “I can’t believe you were even allowed inside. Why, there are some nasty machines in there. I’m going to speak to your new guardian about it immediately.”

April’s face fell. “ _You’re_ not our new guardian?”

“Oh no,” the man said. “Forgive me for not introducing myself. My name is Charles, and it’s very nice to have the nine of you here at Lucky Smells Lumbermill.”

“It's very nice to be here,” Violet lied.

“I find that difficult to believe,” Charles said, “seeing as you’ve been forced to work in the mill, but let’s put that behind us and have a fresh start. Would you care for a peach?”

“They’ve had their lunch!” came a booming voice.

The orphans whirled around and stared at the man they saw. He was quite short, shorter than Violet, and dressed in a shiny dark green suit. The man was smoking a cigar, and the smoke from the cigar covered his entire head, obscuring his face.

“Oh, hello, sir,” Charles said. “I was just meeting the Baudelaire children. Did you know they had arrived?”

“Of course I knew they arrived,” the smoke-faced man said. “I’m not an idiot.”

“No, of course not,” Charles said. “But were you aware that they were put to work in the lumbermill? On a new log day, no less! I was just explaining to them what a terrible mistake that was.”

“It wasn’t a mistake,” the man said. “I don’t make mistakes, Charles.”

He turned to face the children. “Hello, Baudelaire orphans. Call me Sir. I thought we should lay eyes on one another.”

“Batex!” Solitude shrieked, which probably meant, “But we’re _not_ laying eyes on one another!”

“Now, there are rules about my lumbermill that you children are too young to understand,” Sir said. “Firstly, I’m the boss. Everybody has to do what I say, even my partner here.”

He motioned toward Charles.

“Doesn’t partner mean ‘equal?’ ” Klaus asked.

Nick rolled his eyes. “No, it means they’re gay.”

“The definitions aren’t mutually exclusive,” Charles said. “We split everything fifty-fifty.”

“I do all the work. He irons my clothes,” said Sir. “That’s is a good deal. Don’t you think so?”

“I guess so," Klaus said. “I don’t know very much about the lumber business.”

“Well,” Sir went on, “I want to give you nine a good deal as well. Now, I heard all about this Count Olaf fellow, who sounds like quite a jerk, and those people who work for him. So when Mr. Poe gave me a call, I worked out a deal. The deal is this: I will try to make sure that Count Olaf and his associates never go anywhere near you, and you will work in my lumbermill until you come of age and get all that money. Is that a fair deal?”

“No,” said Nick. “That is an enormously unfair deal.”

“Oh, Sir,” Charles said. “You can’t be serious. A lumbermill is no place for small children to work.”

“Don’t argue with me. I’m your partner,” Sir said. “Working in the lumbermill will teach them responsibility. It’ll teach them the value of work. And it’ll teach them how to make flat wooden boards out of trees.”

“Well, you probably know best,” Charles said, shrugging.

“But we could read about all of those things,” Colin said, “and learn about them that way.”

“That’s true, Sir,” Charles said. “They could study in the library. They seem very well-behaved, and I’m sure they would cause no trouble.”

“Your library!” Sir scoffed. “Don’t listen to Charles, children. My partner has insisted that we create a library for the employees at the mill, and so I let him. But it’s no substitute for hard work.”

“Please, Sir,” said Lilac, “at least let the three babies stay in the dormitory. They’re much too young to work.”

“I’ve offered you a very good deal,” Sir said. “As long as you stay within the gates of the Lucky Smells Lumbermill, this Count Olaf will not come near you. In addition, I’m giving you a place to sleep, a nice hot dinner, and a stick of gum for lunch. And all you have to do in return is a few years’ work. That sounds like a pretty good deal to me. Any questions?”

“I have a few questions,” Nick said, taking a few steps forward. “How can you force small children to work in a lumbermill? How can you treat us so horridly, after all we’ve been through? How can you pay your employees in coupons instead of money, and how can you feed us only gum for lunch?”

“Enough nonsense!” Sir said. “You should be thankful for the opportunity to work. In fact, I’d even go so far as to say I’m doing you children a favor. Your parents caused this lumbermill more trouble than your labor is worth.”

“Our parents caused the lumbermill trouble?” said Colin. “What do you mean?”

“Every man, woman, and child in Paltryville knows the name Baudelaire,” Sir said. “Your parents are the ones who burned down the town.”

“Our parents did _what_?” said Nick.

“Paltryville used to be booming,” Sir said. “We had a world food market, two hot yoga studios, and there was even talk of a water park. The name Paltryville was a misnomer. Then the Baudelaires came and they. Burned. It. Down.”

He chuckled. “I guess what goes around comes around, right?”

* * *

“Never mind what he said about your already having your lunch,” Charles said, as soon as the door to Sir’s office closed. “Have this peach.”

“Thank you,” Violet said, and hurriedly divided the peach into eight pieces, giving the biggest pieces to the babies and taking none for herself. She handed Sunny the pit, hoping the baby could use it as a biting toy.

“You know,” Charles said, “because you seem like such nice children, and because you’ve worked so very hard today, I’m going to do something for you. Can you guess what it is?”

“Talk to Sir,” April said, “and convince him that we shouldn’t work in the lumbermill?”

“Well, no,” Charles admitted. “That wouldn’t do any good. He won’t listen to me.”

“But you’re his partner,” Nick pointed out. “You should be able to stand up to him.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Charles replied. “When Sir has made up his mind, he has made up his mind. I know he sometimes is a little bit mean, but you’ll have to excuse him. He had a very terrible childhood. Do you understand?”

Violet glanced at each of her younger siblings, and her stomach growled. “Yes,” she sighed. “I understand. I think I’m having a very terrible childhood myself.”

“Well, I know what will make you feel better,” Charles said, “at least a little bit. Let me show you the library before you go back to work. Then you can visit it whenever you want. Come on, it’s right down the hall.”

Charles led the Baudelaires down the hallway. At the end of a hallway was a little door, which Charles opened. The library was a large room, filled with wooden bookshelves and comfortable-looking sofas. The Baudelaire children stepped inside the room, confused.

“Where are the books?” Klaus asked. “All these bookshelves are empty.”

“That’s the only thing wrong with this library,” Charles said. “Sir wouldn’t give me any money to buy books.”

“You mean there are no books at all?” Nick asked.

“Just three,” Charles said, and walked to the farthest bookshelf. “Without money, of course, it was difficult to acquire any books, but I did have three books donated. Sir donated his book, _The History of Lucky Smells Lumbermill_. The mayor of Paltryville donated this book, _The Paltryville Constitution_. And here’s _Advanced Ocular Science_ , donated by Dr. Orwell, a doctor who lives in town.”

Charles held up the last book to show the Baudelaires the cover, and the children stared in dismay and fear. Printed on the dusty cover of _Advanced Ocular Science_ was the eye that they had seen on the building next door, and on the lid of their father’s spyglass, and on the ankle of Count Olaf.

* * *

Lilac woke up with a start.

Something in her dream had woken her up, but she couldn’t remember what it was. She sat up in the lower bunk and took two deep breaths to calm her racing heartbeat and trembling hands, just as she had done night after night for almost more nights than she could count. She blinked, eyes darting from wall to wall of the darkened dormitory. Her eyes landed on Solitude and Sunny, sharing the bunk next to her own, and she remembered what her dream had been.

She and her siblings had been trapped in a burning Paltryville, stuck behind a locked door in the eye-shaped building. They had pounded on the door, shouting for help, but no one could reach them. Lilac had seen through the window that every person who tried to get to the door—some with faces that she recognized, others with faces that she didn’t—was engulfed by the raging flames, some only steps away from the door. Their parents had gotten the closest; they had been turning a key in the lock when the flames had caught up to them.

“Lilac?”

April sat upright in her top bunk, looking down at her older sister.

“Go back to sleep, April,” Lilac said.

“But you’re awake,” April said. “I heard you shout in your sleep.”

“It was just a nightmare,” said Lilac. “Don’t worry about it.”

April rolled over onto her elbows. “I’m worried anyway.”

“Don’t be,” Lilac said. “That’s not your job.”

“I didn’t know I had a job.” April smiled a little. “Other than working in a lumbermill, of course. What _is_ my job?”

“Your job is to be an inventor,” Lilac said. “When you grow up, you’re going to build sets for the circus or pilot a plane or—”

“Build a hot air balloon and go up in it.”

“Exactly. You can do whatever you want,” Lilac said. “You shouldn’t need to worry about every silly thing.”

“Nightmares aren’t silly—”

“Just go back to sleep,” Lilac said. “We can talk about it in the morning, okay?”

April shifted underneath her rough blanket.

“Okay,” she said finally. “We’ll talk about it in the morning.”

Lilac lay back down on her pillow and listened as April’s breathing slowed. She closed her eyes and matched her own breathing to April’s, hoping to fall back asleep. In and out, in and out.

“Nick?” Colin whispered. “Are you awake?”

Nick lay in the bunk next to the twins’, staring at the bottom of the bunk above him. “No,” he whispered back. “I can’t stop thinking about what Sir said.”

“You don’t think it could be true,” said Colin. “Right?”

There was a long silence.

“I don’t know,” Nick finally said. “I don’t know what to believe anymore.”

“Of course it’s not true,” Colin said. “We need to clear our parents’ names.”

Nick shook his head. “It’s not worth it,” he said. “We have to get out of here, as fast as possible.”

“I don’t like this place either,” Colin said, “but staying is the best way to find out what our parents were hiding.”

“The best way to find out,” Nick said, “would be to _ask_ them.”

“If we clear their names,” Colin said, “maybe we can finally get some answers. Our parents wouldn’t have wanted us to just sit here while their names were dragged through the mud.”

“If that’s not what they wanted, they shouldn’t have left us alone.”

“You know that’s not what they did.”

Nick sighed. “I guess we’re not seeing eye to eye.”

“I wish…”

Nick rolled over on his side to face Colin. “You wish what?”

“I wish they were here,” Colin admitted.

“That’s a useless wish.”

“I know.”

Nick leaned back into his pillow and closed his eyes. “I wish they were here too,” he whispered.

As Colin and Nick drifted off to sleep, Lilac lay awake in her bunk, eyes wide open and wishing.

* * *

The next day, the Baudelaires again woke up to the sound of Foreman Flacutono’s pots banging together. They again stumbled into their uniforms and into the lumbermill, and they again spent the morning tearing bark off trees.

“It’s very puzzling,” April said. “Count Olaf is simply nowhere to be found.”

“I know,” Klaus said. “That building looks like his tattoo, and so does that book cover. But Count Olaf himself hasn't shown his face.”

“It’s possible that Count Olaf hasn’t found us,” Lilac said. “After all, Paltryville is in the middle of nowhere. It could take him years to track us down.”

“Pelli!” Sunny exclaimed, which probably meant, “But that doesn’t explain the eye-shaped building, or the cover of the book.”

“Those things could just be coincidence,” Violet admitted. “We’re so scared of Count Olaf that maybe we’re just thinking we’re seeing him everywhere. Maybe he won’t show up. Maybe we really are safe here.”

“That’s the spirit,” said Phil, who had been working near them all this time. “Look on the bright side. Lucky Smells Lumbermill might not be your favorite place, but at least there’s no sign of this Olaf guy you keep talking about. This might turn out to be the most fortunate part of your lives.”

“I admire your optimism,” Klaus said, smiling at Phil. “Maybe we should try to be optimists, too.”

“Well,” Violet said, after a pause, “I suppose we’ll only have to work here for three years. Then I’ll be of age, and we can use some of the Baudelaire fortune. I’d like to build an inventing studio for April and myself.”

“And I’d like to build a repair shop,” Lilac said, “perhaps over Lake Lachrymose, where Aunt Josephine’s house used to be, so we can always remember her.”

“And I’d like to build a library,” Klaus said. “In a few years, I could run it myself.”

“It would be open to the public,” Colin added, “and stocked with every kind of book imaginable.”

“We could build a new house with a large kitchen,” Sensible said.

“Argent,” Solitude said, which probably meant, “We could buy back Uncle Monty’s reptile collection, and take care of all the reptiles.”

“Dole!” Sunny shrieked, which probably meant, “And I could be a dentist!”

“Those are all excellent ideas,” Phil said. “What about you, Nick?”

Nick, who was staring off blankly into space, didn’t respond.

“You’re thinking something,” Colin told him.

“It’s the new foreman,” Nick said. “What if he’s Count Olaf and being a foreman is his new disguise?”

“He _is_ cruel like Count Olaf,” said April, “but Count Olaf runs a horrible theater company, not a lumbermill.”

“But isn’t it suspicious how we never see his face?” said Nick. “And his voice is always so muffled.”

Klaus shrugged. “The mill is noisy. It’s no wonder we can hardly hear him.”

“I know what you’re trying to do,” Colin said.

Nick raised his eyebrows. “And what is that?”

“Find a reason to leave,” Colin said. “And we will, I promise, as soon as we clear our parents’ names.”

“And what if we look into this Paltryville fire,” Nick said, “and we don’t like what we find?”

Colin looked at his younger brother for a long moment. Then he put down his debarker.

“Fine,” he said. “Keep working. I’ll find out if the foreman is Count Olaf.”

Before anyone could stop him, Colin walked over to Foreman Flacutono, who was sleeping in a booth in the corner. Slowly and silently, Colin kneeled down and reached for the hem of the foreman’s pant leg.

Foreman Flacutono stirred, and Colin jerked his hand back. He held his breath as the foreman snorted and shifted in place, spun into shallower dreams. But after a few seconds, he stopped moving and began to snore again. Colin reached for his ankle again, fingers trembling, and started to slide the fabric upward to expose the foreman’s ankle.

Then the foreman twitched again. His boot stomped down, kicking up a cloud of sawdust and almost stepping on Colin’s fingers.

“What are you doing, Baudelemon?”

Colin looked around wildly, trying to come up with a response. “I… I need a new debarker.”

“Spoiled brat wants a new debarker,” said Foreman Flacutono. “Old rusty one isn’t good enough for him, eh? They’re over there, rich boy.”

Without warning, the foreman drew back his boot and kicked Colin in the ribs. Colin fell to the ground, his glasses falling off his face and skittering over to the foreman’s feet. And with an awful crack, Foreman Flacutono stepped on the glasses with the toe of his boot, and ground them into the dust.

“Whoopsie.”

“Colin!” April threw down her debarker and rushed to her twin’s side, her siblings close behind. “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” he said, getting back to his feet. “My glasses, though…”

“They look A-okay to me,” Phil said.

“They’re twisted, cracked, and hopelessly broken,” Violet pointed out. “He can scarcely see anything without them.”

“Too bad for you,” Foreman Flacutono said, shrugging.

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous,” said Charles, who had come over to see what all the fuss was about. “He needs a replacement pair, Foreman Flacutono. A child could see that.”

“Not me,” Colin said. “I can scarcely see anything.”

“Well, take my arm,” Charles said. “There’s no way you can work in a lumbermill without being able to see what you’re doing. I’ll take you to the eye doctor right away.”

“Oh, thank you,” Lilac said, relieved. “Is there an eye doctor nearby?”

“Oh yes,” Charles replied. “The closest one is Dr. Orwell, who wrote that book we have in the library. Dr. Orwell’s office is just outside the doors of the mill. I’m sure you noticed it on your way here—it’s made to look like a giant eye. Come on, Colin.”

“Oh, no, Charles!” April cried. “Don't take him there! That building has the mark of—”

“I’ll go,” Colin said. “Maybe I can find some answers.”

“But—”

Foreman Flacutono began to clang his pots together, and the rest of what April said was lost to the noise of the lumbermill. The Baudelaire orphans could only watch helplessly as Charles led their brother away.


	27. "You Catch More Flies With Honey"

Charles walked to the eye-shaped building and helped Colin up the steps to the door, but before he could open it, the pupil swung open to reveal a person in a long white coat with a name tag reading “Dr. Orwell.” Dr. Orwell was a tall woman with a tight bun, big black boots, and a long black cane with a shiny red jewel on the top.

“You’re Dr. Orwell?” Colin said, unable to hide his surprise.

“Looks like somebody broke their glasses,” she said, giving a thin-lipped smile and motioning to the mangled glasses in his hand.

“See?” Charles said, leading Colin inside. “Perfectly friendly.”

“Well, you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar,” Dr. Orwell said. “That’s an expression, a fancy way of saying you’re more likely to get what you want by acting in a sweet way, rather than in a distasteful way, like vinegar.”

“I _know_ what that means,” Colin said. “And actually, you catch the most flies with manure.”

Dr. Orwell took his hand and started to lead him up a flight of stairs. “Wave goodbye to your friend.”

Colin twisted around, trying to get a last glimpse of Charles. “Goodbye? What do you mean?”

“No parents or guardians in the exam room allowed,” she said, taking him to a small, white room with a single hospital chair and lots of dangerous-looking optometrical equipment. “Now sit.”

He sat down. “Is this really necessary to fix my glasses?”

“An eye exam is standard procedure for all my patients,” she said. “You look nervous.”

“Father always said he didn’t trust optimists or optometrists,” he admitted.

“Well, sounds like he may have had a bad experience with one,” she said, fixing a machine with black and white circles in front of Colin’s face. He had seen this type of machine several times before, at his annual optometry appointments, and he had read about them enough to know that this device was called a phoropter, but knowing its proper name didn’t dispel the butterflies in his stomach.

“I wonder who she was,” Dr. Orwell continued, “or if she ever practiced optometry again, after the heartbreak and the lawsuit and the plastic surgery to assume a new identity in a faraway town.”

“What did you say?” Colin asked.

“I said, try not to blink,” she replied. “You’re a smart boy. Do you know what bedside manner means?”

“It’s when—”

“It’s when a doctor speaks in a calm and reassuring voice to make sure her patients trust her,” she interrupted. “And how are we feeling, Colin?”

“Not good,” he said.

“Because you broke your glasses.”

“Because of this town,” he said. “Everyone thinks our parents did this bad thing, but they never even met them.”

“Well, I’m not like everyone else.”

He frowned. “You don’t believe it?”

“I met your parents,” she said.

“That’s not possible.”

“Your father liked to recite poetry in the evenings,” she said, “and he would always adjust his glasses when he wanted to be taken seriously, a habit you inherited. Your mother was an opera singer with a flair for the dramatic, especially concerning dragonfly-themed couture.”

He blinked. “I don’t—I don’t understand.”

She smiled—a cold smile, like a shark. “Look at the eye chart, lucky boy.”

* * *

“I tell you, you have nothing to worry about,” Phil said, as the eight remaining Baudelaires picked at their casserole. Dinnertime was almost over, and Colin had still not returned from Dr. Orwell’s.

“I think we do, Phil,” Lilac said. “I think we do have something to worry about.”

“Colin has been gone all afternoon,” Klaus said, “and we’re worried that something might have happened to him. Something awful.”

“I know that doctors can seem scary to young children,” Phil said, “but doctors are your friends, and they can’t hurt you.”

“That’s not true,” Nick said. “Doctors aren’t your friends any more than mail deliverers are your friends, or butchers are your friends, or refrigerator repair-people are your friends. A doctor is just a person whose job it is to make you feel better.”

“Anyone who makes you feel better is a friend,” Phil said. “Dr. Orwell must have just fallen behind in her appointments.”

“I doubt it,” Nick said darkly, glancing at the window drawn on the dormitory wall. He didn’t know what he expected to see—the window was fake, after all—so he turned his attention to April, who was staring down at her casserole, not even pretending to eat it.

“Are you alright?” he asked her.

She shook her head. “This is the second time we’ve lost Colin, and I can’t stop thinking about…”

“What can’t you stop thinking about?”

“We made a promise several years ago,” she said, “a promise to each other. We must have been six or seven. We promised that if we were in trouble, we _wouldn’t_ stick together.”

“That makes no sense,” said Klaus.

“Yes, it does,” said Nick. “If you two split up, there would be a better chance of one of you making it out okay. Or one of you could run for help and get backup.”

“Exactly,” April said. “But when we made that promise, we mostly just meant it for when we got in trouble with Mother and Father. I never thought Colin would actually…”

She trailed off again.

“It’s almost worse being here, in the dormitory, don’t you think?” Nick said. “Just waiting, not knowing what’s happening.”

“It’s definitely worse.”

“This is all my fault,” Lilac said quietly. “I should have stopped him. I saw him go. I _could_ have stopped him, but I didn’t because I—because I—”

“Because you what?” Nick asked.

“It’s not your fault, L.,” Violet said. “If the fault is anyone’s, it’s mine. I promised our parents that I would take care of you, and I’m doing a poor job of it.”

“No, no,” Sunny said, patting Violet’s hand.

“You’re doing a great job,” Klaus said. “No one could do it better.”

“Lights out,” Foreman Flacutono barked over the loudspeaker, making the Baudelaires jump in their seats.

The dormitory was plunged into complete darkness, which meant the orphans had to feel their way to their beds, take off their shoes, and climb ladders up to their bunks in the dark.

Exhausted, most of the children fell asleep right away. Lilac was the only Baudelaire awake when the door creaked open. Colin stood in the doorway, framed by moonlight and wearing a new pair of glasses.

“Colin?”

Lilac got up from her bunk and walked over to him. He gave her a dazed and distant smile, as if she was someone he didn’t know well at all.

“We were so worried about you,” she said. “You were gone for so long. Whatever happened to you?”

“I don’t know,” he said quietly. “I can’t remember.”

“Did you see Count Olaf?” Lilac asked. “Was Dr. Orwell working with him? Did they do anything to you?”

“I don’t know,” he repeated, shaking his head. “I remember breaking my glasses, and I remember Charles taking me to the eye-shaped building. But I don’t remember anything else. I scarcely remember where I am right now.”

“You’re at the Lucky Smells Lumbermill in Paltryville,” she said. “Surely you remember that.”

Colin didn’t answer. He merely looked at his sister with wide, wide eyes. Then slowly, his mouth turned up in a smile.

“You’re smiling,” she said.

“I’m happy to be here, sir,” he replied.

“What?” said Lilac. “I’m not Sir. I’m your sister.”

But Colin was silent once more, and Lilac gave up. The two of them walked back to the bunk beds. But when they reached it, Colin just stood nearby and stared at Lilac, as if he had forgotten how to go to bed.

“Lie down, Colin,” she said gently.

“Yes, sir,” Colin replied, and lay down on the bottom bunk, his eyes wide open. Lilac removed his shoes, which he had forgotten to take off, but it seemed that he didn’t even notice.

“We’ll discuss things in the morning,” she whispered. “In the meantime, try to get some sleep.”

“Yes, sir,” he mumbled again, and immediately shut his eyes. In a second he was fast asleep.

Thoroughly unsettled, Lilac climbed into her own bunk. She sat on the edge of the mattress, her legs dangling over the side. Any chance of her falling asleep that night was gone now.

“I was supposed to look out for Colin,” she whispered to herself. “But I didn’t. I made him an unfair promise, and now he’s acting strange. It’s all my fault. I saw him go and I didn’t stop him.”

She looked at Colin, lying so still that he didn’t even seem to be breathing.

“I wasn’t even all that angry at him, you know,” she continued. “I was just scared. And now we’ll never get to make it up to each other. We’ll never get to fix it.”

She tucked her knees up to her chin and waited for dawn.

* * *

“Where in the world am I?”

Colin blinked and rubbed his eyes.

“Is that Colin?”

April jumped down from the bunk above Colin and threw her arms around him.

“What happened?” she asked. “What was it like inside the eye? Did you find out anything?”

Colin looked at April carefully, as if they were strangers rather than twins.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m having trouble remembering things. What happened yesterday?”

“That’s what we want to ask you—”

“Get up, get up!” Foreman Flacutono shouted, walking over to the Baudelaires and clanging his pots together. “The Lucky Smells Lumbermill has no time for dawdling! Get out of bed this instant and go straight to work!”

Colin’s eyes grew very wide, and he started walking toward the door of the dormitory, without a word. The other Baudelaires looked at one another and hurried to follow their brother and the other employees, but something made April stop. On the floor next to Colin’s bunk were his shoes. He hadn’t even put them on before walking outside.

“His shoes!” she said, picking them up. “Colin, you forgot your shoes!”

She ran after him, but Colin didn’t even look back.

“Come on, children,” Phil said. “Let’s hurry to the lumbermill.”

“Phil, there’s something wrong with my brother,” April said, watching Colin open the door of the lumbermill and lead the other employees inside. “He scarcely says a word to us, he doesn’t seem to remember anything, and look—he didn’t put on his shoes this morning!”

“Well, look on the bright side,” Phil said. “We’re supposed to finish tying today, and next we do the stamping. Stamping is the easiest part of the lumber business.”

“I don’t care about the lumber business!” April cried. “Something is wrong with Colin!”

“Let’s not make trouble, April,” Phil said, and walked off toward the lumbermill.

Inside, the string machine was already whirring, and the employees were beginning to tie up the last few batches of boards. April and Nick each grabbed one of Colin’s arms and dragged their barefooted brother to a corner of the mill.

“Colin, please talk to me,” April said. “You’re frightening us. You’ve got to tell us what Dr. Orwell did, so we can help you.”

Colin stared at his sister with widened eyes. “Lucky Smells is our life,” he said in a monotone. “Lucky Smells is our home.”

“No, it’s not,” said Nick. “A home is where people take care of you, not make you work in a mill for gum.”

Colin looked like he was about to say something, but he was interrupted by Foreman Flacutono banging his pots together.

“Stamping time!” the foreman shouted. “Everybody line up for stamping. And you,” he said, pointing to Colin, “you, you lucky boy, will be operating the machine. Come over here so I can give you instructions.”

“Yes, sir,” Colin said.

Without another word he stood up and walked toward Foreman Flacutono while his siblings looked on amazedly. Foreman Flacutono whispered something to him, and he walked slowly over to the stamping machine and began to operate its controls. Foreman Flacutono nodded to Colin and clanged his pots together again.

“Let the stamping begin!” he said, in his terrible muffled voice.

The workers organized themselves in a line and, as the Baudelaires watched, they lifted a bundle of boards and placed it on a special mat. Then Colin made the machine bring its huge, flat stone down on top of the boards with a thunderous stamp, leaving a label in red ink that said “Lucky Smells Lumbermill.”

“You see?” Phil told the Baudelaire children. “There’s nothing wrong with Colin. He’s working the machine perfectly. You spent all that time worrying for nothing. I told you that if you just looked on the bright side—”

With a terrible crash, Phil fell to the floor mid-sentence, his face pale and sweaty. The stamping machine had gone horribly wrong, and the huge flat stone had not been brought down where it was supposed to be brought down, on the bundle of boards. Most of the stone had been brought down on the string machine, which was now hopelessly smashed. But part of it had been brought down on Phil’s leg.

Foreman Flacutono dropped his pots and ran over to the controls of the stamping machine, pushing Colin aside. With a flip of the switch he brought the stone up again, and everyone gathered around to see the damage.

The string machine was split open like an egg, and the string had become completely entwined and entangled. And Phil’s leg was twisted, tangled, and stained with red ink, but Phil looked up and gave them a weak smile.

“Well,” he said, “this isn’t too bad. My left leg is broken, but at least I’m right-legged. That’s pretty fortunate.”

“I thought he’d say something more along the lines of, ‘Aaaaah! My leg! My leg!’ ” Nick murmured to Klaus.

“If someone could just help me get to my foot,” Phil said, “I’m sure that I can get back to work.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Violet said. “You need to go to a hospital.”

“Yes, Phil,” another worker said. “We have those coupons from last month, fifty percent off a cast at the Ahab Memorial Hospital. Two of us will chip in and get your leg all fixed up. I’ll call for an ambulance right away.”

Phil smiled. “That’s very kind of you,” he said.

“This is a disaster!” Foreman Flacutono shouted. “This is the worst accident in the history of the lumbermill!”

“No, no,” Phil said. “It’s fine. I’ve never liked my left leg so much, anyway.”

“Not your leg, the string machine!” Foreman Flacutono said impatiently. “Those cost an inordinate amount of money!”

Phil frowned. “What does ‘inordinate’ mean?”

“It means many things,” Colin said suddenly, blinking. “It can mean ‘irregular.’ It can mean ‘immoderate.’ It can mean ‘disorderly.’ But in the case of money, it’s more likely to mean ‘excessive.’ Foreman Flacutono means that the string machine costs a lot of money.”

April laughed out loud, and the foreman folded his arms.

“There’s nothing funny about losing an inordinate amount of money, Baudelake,” Foreman Flacutono said.

“That’s not why I’m laughing,” she said. “Colin, you’re defining things! You’re back to normal!”

Colin looked at April and gave her a sleepy smile. “I guess I am.”

He blinked again, and then looked at the mess he had caused. “What happened here?” he asked, frowning. “Phil, what happened to your leg?”

“It’s perfectly alright,” Phil said. “It’s just a little sore.”

“You mean you don’t remember what happened?” Violet asked.

“What happened _when_?” Colin asked, frowning. “Where was I? Why am I not wearing shoes?”

“Well, _I_ certainly remember what happened!” Foreman Flacutono shouted, pointing at Colin. “You smashed our machine! I’ll tell Sir about this right away. You’ve put a complete halt to the stamping process. Nobody will earn a single coupon today!”

“That’s not fair!” April said. “It was an accident. And Colin never should have been put in charge of that machine. He didn’t know how to use it!”

“Well, unless someone else is willing to operate the machine, he’ll have to be the one to do it,” Foreman Flacutono said. “Does anyone volunteer?”

The workers fell silent.

“I said, does anyone volunteer?” the foreman repeated.

Still, no one responded. Phil was still lying on the ground, his left leg a mangled mess, and no one wanted to be responsible for another accident.

“Fine,” Foreman Flacutono finally said, letting his pots fall to the ground with a clang. “Klaus, pick up my pots!”

Klaus went over to pick up the pots, but Foreman Flacutono stuck his foot out, tripping Klaus. He fell right to the ground of the lumbermill, his glasses flying off his face. He landed directly on top of them.

“My glasses!” he cried. “My glasses are broken!”

Colin kneeled down beside Klaus. He picked up his brother’s glasses, which were indeed twisted, cracked, and hopelessly broken.

“Are you sure?” he asked Klaus, even though the evidence was right there in front of him to see. “Are you sure you can’t wear them?”

“I’m sure,” Klaus said miserably.

“Well, well, well,” Foreman Flacutono said. “How careless of you. I guess you’re due for an appointment with Dr. Orwell, just like your brother.”

“No!” Colin shouted. He took off his own glasses and handed them to Klaus.

“Take my glasses for now,” he said. “We can trade off.”

Klaus put the glasses on.

“Can you see?”

“Not really,” said Klaus. “My eyesight is worse than yours.”

“Come with me,” the foreman said. “You need to see an optometrist.”

“We don’t want to bother Dr. Orwell,” Violet said quickly. “If you give me some basic supplies, I’m sure I can build some glasses myself.”

“No, no,” he said. “You’d better leave optometry to the experts. Say goodbye to your brother.”

“We’ll take him,” Colin said, “We’ll bring him to Dr. Orwell.”

“What are you talking about?” April hissed.

“If we can’t prevent him from going to Dr. Orwell,” he whispered to her, “at least we can go with him.”

“Well, all right,” said Foreman Flacutono. “That’s a good idea, come to think of it. Why don’t all nine of you go see Dr. Orwell?”


	28. "It's As If I Were Hypnotized"

Klaus looked up nervously at the sign above the door to Dr. Orwell’s building. The sign was shaped like a pair of glasses, and Klaus couldn’t help but think of the eyes that kept appearing everywhere in his life, from Count Olaf’s ankle to the lid of his father’s spyglass.

“In the book _The Great Gatsby_ , there’s a famous sign shaped like a pair of eyeglasses,” he said to himself.

“Does it represent an optometrist?” Sensible asked.

Klaus shook his head. “It represents the eyes of God staring down and judging society as a moral wasteland.”

“We don’t have to go, you know,” Nick said. “We could run away. We could hide until the next train arrived, and take it as far as possible. We know how to work in a lumbermill now, so we could get jobs in some other town.”

“But what if he found us?” Lilac said. “Who would protect us from Count Olaf, if we were all by ourselves?”

“We could protect ourselves,” Violet replied. “We’ve protected ourselves before.”

“Just barely,” April replied. “We’ve just barely escaped from Count Olaf each time. We can’t run away and try to get along by ourselves. We have to go see Dr. Orwell and hope for the best.”

She turned to Colin. “Think, Colin. Try to think. What happened to you when you went inside?”

“It must have been something bad, for me to hurt Phil’s leg like that,” Colin said. “But I don’t remember. It’s like that part of my brain has been wiped clean. It’s like I was asleep from the moment I walked into that building until right there at the lumbermill.”

“But you weren’t asleep,” Lilac said. “You were walking around like a zombie. And then you caused that accident and hurt poor Phil.”

“But I don’t remember those things,” Colin said. “It’s as if I…”

His voice trailed off and he stared into space for a moment.

“Colin?” Lilac asked, worried that her brother was entering that sleeplike trance again.

“It’s as if I were hypnotized,” he finished. “Hypnosis would explain everything.”

“I thought hypnosis was only in scary movies,” April said.

Colin shook his head. “I read the _Encyclopedia Hypnotica_ just last year. It described all these famous cases of hypnosis throughout history. There was an ancient Egyptian king who was hypnotized. All the hypnotist had to do was shout ‘Ramses!’ and the king would perform chicken imitations, even though he was in front of the royal court.”

“I remember that book,” Nick said. “There was a Chinese merchant who lived during the Ming Dynasty—he was hypnotized, too. All the hypnotist had to do was shout ‘Mao!’ and the merchant would play the violin, even though he had never seen one before.”

“A man who lived in England in the 1920s was hypnotized,” Klaus said, his excitement at talking about a book overcoming his nervousness. “All the hypnotist had to do was shout ‘Bloomsbury!’ and he suddenly became a brilliant writer, even though he couldn’t read.”

“Mazee!” Sunny shrieked, which probably meant, “We don’t have time to hear all these stories!”

“But it’s taking my mind off Dr. Orwell,” Klaus said.

“It was also a very interesting book,” Colin said, “so I’m pleased that it’s coming in handy.”

“Well, what did the book say about how to stop yourself from being hypnotized?” Violet asked.

“Nothing,” Klaus said.

“Nothing?” Violet repeated. “An entire encyclopedia about hypnosis said nothing about it at all?”

“If it did, we didn’t read any of it,” said Colin. “We all thought the parts about the famous hypnosis cases were the most interesting, so we read those, but we skipped some of the boring parts.”

“I’m never skipping the boring parts of a book again,” Klaus said, and walked cautiously toward the door.

“Speak for yourself,” Nick said. “But wait—you’re not going inside, are you?”

“What else can we do?” Klaus said quietly.

“There’s always something, Klaus,” Lilac said. “I’m sure we can—”

Before Lilac could finish her sentence, the door swung open. Dr. Orwell stood in the doorway, swinging a pair of eyeglasses on a gold chain around her finger.

“Why hello, Klaus,” Dr. Orwell said. “I knew you’d come to see me eventually.”

She led the Baudelaires inside. “You’re in luck,” she said. “We have very few appointments today, so come on in and I’ll do all the necessary tests. Shirley, my receptionist, made some cookies that the rest of you can eat in the waiting room while I make Klaus’s glasses. It won’t take nearly as long as it did yesterday.”

“Will Klaus be hypnotized?” April demanded.

“Hypnotized?” Dr. Orwell repeated, smiling. “Goodness, no. Hypnosis is only in scary movies. Now, this way to the office.”

The Baudelaires cautiously followed the optometrist down a hallway decorated with medical certificates. Dr. Orwell paused in front of a door marked “Waiting Room.”

“Now, Klaus, follow me to the office,” she said, “and the rest of you children can wait in the waiting room through this door.”

“We’d prefer to go inside with him,” Colin said. “Klaus is… afraid of hospitals.”

“It’ll just be a few moments,” Dr. Orwell said. “And there’s no need to be afraid. I’m an excellent optometrist, no matter what the medical board says.”

“We really—”

The waiting room door swung open, and the Baudelaires gasped. Through the open doorway, the children could see a sofa, a few chairs, a small table with old magazines stacked on it, and a receptionist’s desk, but none of those things had made them gasp. What had made them gasp was the figure who had opened the door, someone in a receptionist’s costume whose nametag read “Shirley” and who sported a pair of shiny eyes that the nine Baudelaire orphans recognized at once.

“Why hello there, children,” said Count Olaf, as Dr. Orwell surreptitiously led Klaus away. “What are your names?”

“You _know_ our names,” April said. “And we know yours. You’re Count Olaf.”

“I’m afraid you're mistaken,” Count Olaf said. “I’m Shirley. See this nametag?”

“Fiti!” Solitude shrieked, which probably meant, “That nameplate doesn’t prove anything, of course!”

“Solitude’s right,” Colin said. “You’re not Shirley just because you have a small piece of adhesive paper with your name on it.”

“How impolite of you to say,” he growled. “And if you do something impolite to _me_ , then _I_ might do something impolite to _you_ , like for instance tearing your hair out with my bare hands.”

“Fine, _Shirley_ ,” Violet said. “You’ve been lurking around Paltryville since we arrived, haven’t you?”

“Maybe.”

“And you’ve been hiding out in the eye-shaped building this whole time, haven’t you?” Nick said.

“Perhaps.”

“And you’re in cahoots with Dr. Orwell, aren’t you?” Sensible said.

“Possibly.”

“And Dr. Orwell hypnotized me and caused that terrible accident, didn’t she?” Colin said.

“Conceivably.”

“And now Klaus is being hypnotized, right now, isn’t he?” April said.

“It’s within the bounds of the imagination.”

“And now you’re going to try to whisk us away, aren't you?” Lilac said.

“Of course not. I’m going to offer you a cookie, like a good little receptionist.”

“You’re not a receptionist!” April cried.

“I certainly am. I’m a poor receptionist who lives all alone, and who wants very much to raise children of his own.”

“Well, you can’t raise us,” Lilac said. “We’re already being raised by Sir.”

“Oh, he’ll hand you over to me soon enough.”

“Don’t be ab—” Nick said, but he stopped himself before he could say “surd.” Sir had already made the Baudelaires work in a lumbermill. After that, it might not be absurd to think that Sir would simply hand the Baudelaire orphans over to Count Olaf.

“Ab?” said a voice behind him. “What in the world does the word ‘ab’ mean?”

The children turned around and saw Dr. Orwell leading Klaus into the waiting room. He was wearing a new pair of glasses and was looking confused.

“Klaus!” Lilac cried. “We were so worried ab—”

She stopped herself before she could say “out” when she saw her brother’s expression. It was the same expression that had been on Colin’s face the previous night, when he finally had come back from his appointment with Dr. Orwell.

“There you go again, with ‘ab,’ ” Dr. Orwell said. “Whatever in the world does it mean?”

The receptionist’s eyes shone brightly. “ ‘Ab’ isn’t a word, of course. Only a stupid person would say a word like ‘ab.’ ”

“They _are_ stupid, aren’t they?” Dr. Orwell agreed. “They must have very low self-esteem.”

“I couldn’t agree more, Georgina.”

“Now, children,” Dr. Orwell said, “here’s your brother. He’s a little tired after his appointment, but he’ll be fine by tomorrow morning. More than fine, in fact. _Much_ more.”

She turned and pointed at the door with her jeweled cane. “I believe you nine know the way out.”

“I don’t,” Klaus said faintly. “I can’t remember coming in here.”

The Baudelaires exchanged worried glances.

“That often happens after optometry appointments,” Dr. Orwell said. “Now run along, orphans.”

Violet took her brother by the hand and began to lead him out of the waiting room, hardly believing they were allowed to go.

“Where are we?” Klaus asked as they walked down the hallway. “What happened to me?”

“You don’t remember anything at all?”

He shook his head.

“Try to concentrate,” Violet said. “Try to remember what happened.”

“I broke my glasses,” Klaus said slowly, “and then we left the lumbermill… I’m very tired, Veronica. Can I go to bed?”

“ _Violet_ ,” Violet said. “My name is _Violet_ , not Veronica.”

“I’m sorry,” Klaus said. “I’m just so tired.”

Violet opened the door of the building, and the orphans stepped outside.

“We’d better take him to the dormitory,” Colin said. “I don’t know what else we can do with Klaus in this state. Then we should tell Sir what’s happened. I hope he can help us.”

“I hope so,” April agreed.

They entered the dormitory, where the other workers were sitting on their bunks and talking quietly among themselves.

“I see you’re back,” one of the workers said. “I’m surprised you can show your faces around here, after what you did to Phil.”

“Oh, come now,” said Phil, who was lying down on his bunk with his leg in a cast. “Colin didn’t mean to do it, did you, Colin?”

“I certainly didn’t,” Colin said, “and I’m very sorry.”

“How are you feeling, Phil?” Lilac asked.

“Oh, perfectly fine,” Phil said. “My leg hurts, but nothing else does. I’m really quite fortunate. But enough about me. There’s a memo that was left for you. Foreman Flacutono said it was very important.”

Phil handed Violet an envelope with the word “Baudelaires” typed on the front. Violet opened the note and read it aloud.

> I have been informed that you caused an accident this morning at the mill that injured an employee and disrupted the day’s work. Accidents are caused by bad workers, and bad workers are not tolerated at the Lucky Smells Lumbermill. If you continue to cause accidents, I will be forced to fire you and send you to live elsewhere. I have located a nice young receptionist named Shirley who lives in town who would be happy to adopt nine young children. If the nine of you continue to be bad workers, I will place you under Shirley’s care.

* * *

“Heure?” Solitude asked, which probably meant, “When do you think they’ll notice we’re gone?”

“Soon,” Sensible replied, helping Sunny crawl up the stairs. “Which is why we have to work fast.”

“Waretu?” Sunny said, which probably meant, “Where are we going?”

“If Dr. Orwell can hypnotize people, she must be able to un-hypnotize them as well,” Sensible explained. “I bet she’s hiding the secret to it in her private office.”

Just as the youngest Baudelaires arrived on the landing of the second floor, they heard the door downstairs creak open. Quickly, Sensible shoved Solitude and Sunny through the nearest door, closed it shut, and locked it.

“I’m so sorry to keep you waiting,” they heard Dr. Orwell say. “Partner trouble. But you’d know all about that, Charles.”

“Yes, sir,” Charles responded in a monotone.

“Oh no,” Solitude whispered, which probably meant, “She has Charles!”

“Now, Charles,” Dr. Orwell said, “would you like to look at the screen and tell me what you see?”

“She’s hypnotizing him,” said Sensible. “We should go before she sees us.”

Carefully and quietly, she rose to her feet, turned around, and nearly screamed.

Dangling in front of her was a life-size human skeleton, gray with age. Its empty eye sockets stared at her as she tried to calm herself.

“Nothing to be frightened of,” she said. “I’m sure many doctors have skeletons to study anatomy.”

“Basira,” Solitude said, which probably meant, “But Dr. Orwell’s an eye doctor. Skeletons don’t even have eyes.”

Sensible placed her hand on a nearby desk to stabilize herself, surprised when her hand slipped on something… well, slippery. It was a stack of laminated documents. She picked them up with interest, scanning the pages to find easy words that she could read.

“These are records,” she realized.

“Feint?” Solitude said, which probably meant, “Any Duke Ellington?”

“Not that type of record, Sunny,” Sensible said. “Medical records. For employee eye exams. There’s Phil here, and Charles, and… I think it’s the entire mill. That’s why they never leave and why they’re happy to work for coupons and gum.”

“Veritas!” Sunny shrieked, which probably meant, “It’s probably why they think our parents started that fire!”

“We need to figure out what breaks the trance,” Sensible said. “Let’s keep looking—”

“Who’s up there?”

The three Baudelaire babies froze. They heard a pair of shoes coming up the stairs, and Solitude whimpered.

“We know you’re here,” Dr. Orwell called out. “You have nowhere to hide.”

Sunny tugged on Sensible’s hand. She didn’t have to say anything for her older sister to know she meant, _What do we do now?_

“I don’t know,” she replied.

“Lilac,” Solitude whispered, which probably meant, “There’s always something.”

“You’re right, Sol,” said Sensible. “There’s always something.”

She looked around the room, painfully aware of the footsteps drawing nearer to the office, and tried to think of what her siblings would do. Violet, Lilac, and April would have made a clever invention to get them out. Colin, Nick, and Klaus would have remembered something they had read. But there weren’t any inventing materials around, and Sensible had only read a few books in the three short years of her life. And they were mostly cookbooks.

Her hand automatically flew to the green matchbox inside her coat, but it wouldn’t do any good to set the office on fire, since she and her sisters were trapped inside. It was too bad, she thought—Dr. Orwell’s medical records would have made excellent kindling. The papers were dry as a bone.

That was when Sensible realized what she could do.

“Show yourselves!”

The door burst open, the lock giving way when faced with Dr. Orwell’s jeweled cane. But when the optometrist flicked on the lights, there were no Baudelaires to be found. Instead, there were medical records scattered all over the desk, a heap of gray bones on the floor, and a smashed hole in the window that was the exact size and shape of a human skull.

In the buffeting afternoon wind, Sunny hung onto the wall of the eye-shaped building for dear life. She closed her eyes and clenched her teeth, trying not to think of the last time she had been dangled fifty feet off the ground.

“Sunny,” Sensible said, hanging onto the wall several feet below her, “you need to climb down.”

Sunny opened her eyes and looked down. The ground was very far away. She felt dizzy. She was going to lose her grip, she was going to _fall_ —

“Can’t!” she shrieked. “Can’t!”

“Yes, you can,” said Sensible. “Wait there. I’m coming back up to help you.”

She let go of the skull to leave her hands free. As Sunny watched, the skull plummeted downward and smashed into a million pieces on the ground, sending up a cloud of gray dust.

That wasn’t comforting.

“Give me your right hand,” said Sensible, who was now directly below Sunny. “Can you hang on with your teeth?”

Sunny stabbed her four teeth into a crack between the bricks. Slowly, she let go with her right hand. Sensible grabbed her hand and held it tight.

“I’ve got you,” she said. “I’ve got you, Sunny.”

She began to help Sunny down, guiding her hands and feet into the right-sized cracks and crevices in the wall.

* * *

“We have to go see Sir,” April said. “We have to explain to him what’s happened.”

“You’re not supposed to see Sir without an appointment,” Phil said.

“This is an emergency,” April said. “Come on, Colin. Come on, Sun—”

She stopped, then looked around the dormitory.

“Sunny?”

“Where’s Sunny?” Lilac cried.

“Susan? Who’s Susan?” Klaus mumbled.

“Solitude and Sensible too,” Violet said. “They’re gone again.”

Lilac threw her hands up in frustration. “This happens with _every single guardian_!” she said. “April, Colin, you two can go talk to Sir. I’m going to look for the babies. They can’t have gone far, right? I hope none of you taught them how to drive.”

“I’m not going to respond to that,” April said quietly. “Let’s go, Colin.”

The twins left the dormitory, followed by Lilac. Violet turned to Nick.

“You’ve been staring at the wall for the last ten minutes,” she said. “So either you’ve been hypnotized too, or you’re thinking of something.”

“ _Advanced Ocular Science_ ,” he said. “The book in Sir’s library. It was written by Dr. Orwell.”

“So it might have a section on hypnotism,” Violet said. “We have to find that book right away. Klaus—”

“Wait,” Nick said. “Klaus can’t go. He thinks Sunny’s name is Susan, for goodness’s sake.”

Violet sighed. “Phil, will you please keep an eye on our brother while we go to the library?”

“Of course,” Phil said.

“A _very_ close eye,” she emphasized, leading Klaus to his bunk. “He’s… he’s not been himself lately, as I’m sure you've noticed. Please make sure he stays out of trouble.”

“I will,” Phil promised.

“Now, Klaus,” Nick said, “please get some sleep, and you’d _better_ feel better in the morning.”

Klaus lay down on the bunk, his eyes glassy.

“Yes, sir,” he said. “Good night, Nicholas.”


	29. "These Brats Know Lots Of Words"

“Dr. Orwell’s hypnotism must be _strong_ ,” Nick said. “Klaus knows my name isn’t Nicholas.”

Violet took down the three books from their shelf in the library of the Lucky Smells Lumbermill. She laid them out in a row on the table.

“I’ll tackle _Advanced Ocular Science_ ,” she said. “You can read _The History of Lucky Smells Lumbermill_. There might be something in it that can clear our parents’ names.”

“What about _The Paltryville Constitution_?” Nick asked.

“A constitution is a set of government principles,” Violet said. “It doesn’t include anything about hypnotism or suspicious fires, so I don’t think it would be very helpful to us right now.”

“Good thinking,” Nick said. He took _The History of Lucky Smells Lumbermill_ in his hands and sat down in a nearby chair to read. Violet took a seat at the table and opened _Advanced Ocular Science_ to the first page.

“Oh dear,” Violet said. “This is a very difficult book.”

“Read it aloud,” Nick said. “I might be able to help.”

“This tome will endeavor to scrutinize, in quasi-inclusive breadth, the epistemology of ophthalmologically contrived appraisals of ocular systems and the subsequent and requisite exertions imperative for expugnation of injurious states,” she read aloud.

Nick made a face. “That sounds fun.”

“If only we had a dictionary,” Violet said glumly. “Then we might be able to figure out what this sentence means.”

“I bet Klaus knows all those words,” Nick said. “If only he wasn’t hypnotized, then he could tell us what that sentence means.”

“Who knows if Klaus could define these words for us?” she said. “He said it felt like part of his brain had been wiped clean. Maybe he doesn’t know all those words when he’s hypnotized.”

“Go to the table of contents,” Nick suggested. “Whenever Colin, Klaus, and I read a long, difficult book, the first thing we do is read the table of contents.”

She sighed and turned her attention back to the book. Quickly she scanned the table of contents, and immediately found what she was looking for.

“Chapter Twelve: Hypnosis and Mind Control,” she read. “Page 154.”

She flipped to the correct page and began reading.

“Hypnosis is an efficacious yet precarious methodology and should not be assayed by neophytes,” Violet read. Realizing that the whole book was written in this manner, her heart began to sink. How in the world did her brothers do it?

She answered her own question. “They would use a dictionary.”

But how could you read a difficult book when there was no dictionary to be found? Violet reread the sentence, but this time she simply skipped the words she didn’t know.

“Hypnosis is an _hmmm_ yet _hmmm_ method _hmmm_ and should not be _hmmm_ by _hmmm_ ,” she read.

Nick looked up from his book, confused. “What are you doing?”

“The _hmmm_ s are the words I don’t know,” Violet explained. “It’s not the best way to read, but I can guess what Dr. Orwell means. I think she means that hypnosis is a difficult method and shouldn’t be learned by amateurs.”

For the better part of an hour, the Lucky Smells library was completely quiet except for the turning of pages. But soon enough, Violet _hmmm_ ed her way into something helpful.

“Nick, listen to this,” she said. “ ‘Once a subject has been hypnotized, a simple _hmmm_ word will make them perform whatever _hmmm_ acts any _hmmm_ wants _hmmm_.’ I think this means that once you’ve hypnotized someone, all you need to do is say a certain word and they’ll obey you.”

“I remember reading that in the _Encyclopedia Hypnotica_ ,” Nick said. “But the word can be anything. I wonder which word applies to Klaus.”

“Beats me,” said Violet. “If only Dr. Orwell had let us inside.”

“When Colin gets back, let’s ask him if he remembers what word Dr. Orwell used on him,” he said. “In the meantime, take a look at this. I think I found something.”

He pointed to a passage in the long book he was reading.

“ ‘The Baudelaires,’ ” he read aloud, “ ‘were unequivocally responsible—’ ”

“Get out of here, all of you!” a voice called out from the hallway. “I have lots of work to do.”

“That’s Sir,” Violet said. “We have to get out of here!”

“Wait!”

In a single swift move, Nick tore the page he had been reading out of _The History of Lucky Smells Lumbermill_. The page fluttered to the carpet. Violet grabbed the book from Nick’s hands and shoved it back onto the shelf alongside the other two books. They dove behind an armchair, just as Sir entered the room, his hat in his hands and a cloud of dark smoke around his face.

“What’s this?” they heard Sir murmur to himself.

Peeking around the armchair, Violet saw Sir pick up the torn-out page from the ground. He read it once, then read it again. Then he made a curious sound, something in between a grunt and a cry.

He balled up the piece of paper in his hand and walked across the room. Violet and Nick shrank back as he passed the armchair where they were hiding, but Sir didn’t notice them. Instead, he walked to the far wall, where a warm fireplace glowed. He tossed the crumpled page into the fire, and Nick flinched.

Sir stood in front of the fireplace, hands clasped behind his back, watching the paper burn. He didn’t leave until the entire page had collapsed into ash.

* * *

April and Colin hurried through the main building of the Lucky Smells Lumbermill, anxious to tell Sir about Klaus’s hypnotism. When they reached the door to Sir’s office, the two of them stopped for a moment to catch their breath. Colin raised his arm to knock on the door, but hesitated.

“We don’t have an appointment,” he said.

“So what?” said April. “This is an emergency.”

He turned to her. “How am I supposed to explain to Sir that I let Dr. Orwell hypnotize me? And that Klaus is hypnotized right now, and I didn’t do anything to stop it?”

“You can’t think like that,” April said. “This wasn’t your fault. This wasn’t _anyone’s_ fault.”

Colin sighed. “I know,” he said. “This whole situation—the lumbermill, the hypnotism, Dr. Orwell—it all gives me a funny feeling. I _know_ I wasn’t responsible for Phil’s injury. I _know_ our parents are innocent. But the way the workers look at us makes me feel like we’ve done something wrong anyway.”

“All the more reason to do something right,” she said. “We have to tell Sir what happened and save Klaus.”

She walked up to the door and gave three firm knocks.

“Come in!”

The children opened the door to the office. Sir was sitting at an enormous desk made of green wood.

“Do you have an appointment?” Sir asked.

“No,” April said, “but it’s very important that we talk to you.”

“I’ll decide what's very important!” Sir barked. “I’m the boss! It’s very important when I say it’s very important, understand?”

“Yes, Sir,” Colin said, “but I think you’ll agree with us when we explain what’s been going on.”

“I _know_ what's been going on,” Sir said. “I’m the boss! Of course I know! Didn’t you get my memo about the accident?”

“The accident,” Colin said, “happened because I was hypnotized.”

“What you do for a hobby is none of my concern,” Sir said, “and it doesn’t excuse accidents.”

“You don’t understand, Sir,” April said. “Colin was hypnotized by Dr. Orwell, who’s in cahoots with Count Olaf. And now she’s hypnotized Klaus as well. Sir, you have to put a stop to this!”

“We _are_ putting a stop to this!” Sir said. “You children will cause no more accidents, and you’ll be safely employed by this lumbermill. Otherwise, out you go!”

“You can’t just throw us out into the street!” April cried.

“Of course not,” Sir said. “As I explained in my memo, I met a very nice receptionist named Shirley in Dr. Orwell’s office. When I mentioned there were nine children in my care, Shirley said that—”

“But that’s Count Olaf!” April cried.

“Do I look like an idiot to you?” Sir asked. “I have a complete description of Count Olaf from Mr. Poe, and this receptionist looked nothing like him. I’ve had enough of your excuses, children. Your job is to work hard at the lumbermill, not cause accidents. I’m busy enough without having to deal with clumsy children.”

“Well, can we call Mr. Poe?” Colin asked. “He knows all about Count Olaf, so perhaps he can be helpful.”

“You want to add the cost of a long-distance phone call to the burden of caring for you?” Sir asked. “I think not. Let me put it to you in the simplest way I can: If you screw up again, I will give you away to Shirley.”

“But—”

“Now get out of here, all of you!” Sir barked. “I have lots of work to do!”

Colin tried to say something again, but he was interrupted by a rumbling hum coming from outside—a hum that he and April immediately recognized as the sound of the lumbermill’s saw.

The twins hurried out the office and across the courtyard, which was quite dark save for the last rays of the sun. They opened the doors of the mill and looked inside. Foreman Flacutono was standing near the entrance, with his back to April and Colin, pointing a finger and giving an order. The rusty sawing machine was whirring toward a log, which was covered in layers of string wrapped around Charles, who was lying very still, like a fly trapped in a spider’s web. And the spider, standing at the controls of the sawing machine, was Klaus.

“Yes, you little twerp,” Foreman Flacutono was saying. “You and your siblings been fortunate so far, avoiding my boss’s clutches, but no more. One more accident and you’ll be ours, and this will be the worst accident the lumbermill has ever seen. Just imagine Sir’s displeasure when he learns that his partner has been sliced into human boards. Now, you lucky boy, go and push the log into the saw!”

“Yes, sir,” said Klaus.

“Klaus!” April shouted. “Klaus, don’t do it!”

“Well, well, well,” said Foreman Flacutono. “If it isn’t the twins. You’re just in time to see the accident.”

“It’s not an accident,” Colin said. “You’re doing this on purpose!”

“Let’s not split hairs,” the foreman said. “That’s Klaus’s job.”

“You’ve been in on this all the time!” April shouted. “You’re in cahoots with Dr. Orwell!”

“So what?” Foreman Flacutono said.

“So what?” Colin repeated. “It means you’re not just a bad foreman—you’re an evil person.”

“I don't know what you mean, lucky boy,” Foreman Flacutono said.

With those words, Colin’s entire demeanor changed. His arms fell to his sides and his face went blank, like the flat wooden boards that the lumbermill produced.

“Lucky,” April realized. “That’s the hypnotizing word. _Lucky._ ”

“Help your brother at the controls, you lucky boy,” Foreman Flacutono said to Colin.

“ _Lucky!_ ” April shouted. “Colin, push the log away from the saw!”

“Yes, sir,” Colin said quietly, and he began to push the log away from the whirring saw.

Foreman Flacutono whirled around and stared at April, enraged. “ _Lucky!_ ” he snarled. “Klaus, push the log back toward the saw!”

“Yes, sir,” said Klaus. He abandoned the controls and moved toward the log.

“ _Lucky!_ ” April cried. “Colin, don’t let Klaus touch the log!”

Klaus grabbed the log, and Colin pulled his brother’s hands away from it. As April watched, the two boys engaged in a strange sort of tug-of-war, each trying to yank the log away from each other. Finally, Colin pulled the log toward him with such force that Klaus fell to the ground.

“ _LUCKY!_ ” bellowed a new voice from the doorway, and everyone turned around. Dr. Orwell, who had appeared in the doorway of the lumbermill along with her shiny-eyed receptionist.

“We just stopped by to make sure everything was going well,” Dr. Orwell said. “And I’m certainly glad we did. _Lucky!_ ” she shouted to Colin and Klaus. “Don’t listen to your sister!”

“What a good idea,” Foreman Flacutono said. “I never thought of that.”

“That’s why you’re only a foreman,” Dr. Orwell replied. “ _Lucky!_ Klaus, get that log back by any means necessary!”

With surprising speed, Klaus climbed back up to his feet and threw himself across the log. Letting go of the log, Colin grabbed Klaus by the shoulders and pushed him. Klaus stumbled backward, toward the whirring saw.

“Klaus!” April shouted, real fear in her voice this time. “Stop! _Lucky!_ ”

But Klaus made no move to stop, no matter how much April shouted.

“Stop!” shouted another voice. “Stop!”

Again, everyone in the lumbermill turned around to see Violet and Nick push past Dr. Orwell. Violet waved _Advanced Ocular Science_ in the air.

“Inordinate!” she shouted, as loudly as she could. “Inordinate, Colin! Inordinate, Klaus! _Inordinate!_ ”

Colin awoke from his hypnosis first. He blinked and looked around him, confused.

“Where am—”

“Klaus!” April cried. “Look out for Klaus!”

Colin turned his head to see Klaus stumbling toward the saw, and his eyes widened in alarm. He ran toward the saw and tackled Klaus to the ground, pushing him out of the way of the saw. Klaus coughed and wiped sawdust off his face.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“They’re un-hypnotized!” Dr. Orwell said. “Shirley, how in the world would a child know a complicated word like ‘inordinate?’ ”

“These brats know lots of words. They’re book addicts.”

“Nick and I figured it out when we remembered what Foreman Flacutono had said that un-hypnotized Colin,” Violet said. “He said the string machine cost an inordinate amount of money. ‘Inordinate’ was the only unusual word in that sentence.”

“It doesn’t matter. We can still create an accident and win the fortune.”

“Oh no, you can’t!”

For the third time that day, everyone turned around at the sound of a new voice. Lilac stood in the doorway, holding Solitude’s hand.

Dr. Orwell laughed. “A toddler and a girl so tired she can barely stand upright? You can’t defeat me.”

“I know,” Lilac said. “But _she_ can.”

Right on cue, Sunny crawled out from hiding and bit Dr. Orwell’s hand. The optometrist yelped in surprise. But she recovered quickly, and with a wicked smile, she pressed the red jewel on top of her black cane, and a shiny blade emerged from the opposite end.

“ _En garde!_ ” Sunny said, baring her four sharp teeth.

Dr. Orwell swung her cane-sword at Sunny, and Sunny’s teeth met Dr. Orwell’s blade with a metallic _clink_.

As Sunny and Dr. Orwell began to swordfight, Klaus turned his still-dazed attention to the issue of the saw, which was still moving steadily in Charles’s direction. With horror, Klaus saw that the blade was beginning to slice through the soles of Charles’s shoes, and Charles still wasn’t moving at all. If Klaus moved toward Charles, he would walk right into Sunny and Dr. Orwell’s swordfight, and he knew Sunny’s teeth were deadly. But if he didn’t, Charles would be sliced into ribbons. He didn’t know what to do.

“What can I do?” he muttered to himself. “What can I do? What can—”

His eyes landed on the box of gun to his right. Getting an idea, he ripped open a box of gum and shoved several pieces into his mouth, chewing ferociously. He spat the gum out of his mouth and threw it at the machine as hard as he could, but it merely fell to the ground. He grabbed a bigger handful of gum, but even as he chewed, he knew it wouldn’t be heavy enough to reach the saw.

“Klaus!” Solitude shouted. Klaus looked down at her.

“What?”

“Fishing,” she said.

Solitude mimed casting a fishing line, and Klaus understood exactly what she was referring to. He had once gone fishing with the Baudelaires’ mother, who had warned him that fishing was one of the most boring activities in the world. It _had_ been boring, since the two of them had sat in a rowboat in the middle of a lake and done nothing for an entire afternoon, but Klaus realized that the trip hadn’t been entirely pointless after all. He grabbed the nearest debarker and spat his gum onto one end of it, like a fishing line and pole. He took a deep breath and cast the debarker the way his mother taught him to cast his fishing pole.

_Plop!_ The gum stretched over Dr. Orwell and Sunny and landed on the string that was tying the Charles to the log. Klaus pulled on the debarker as hard as he could, and slowly, _slowly_ , the log moved to one side, delivering Charles from his certain death. 

Suddenly, the dusty loudspeaker overhead crackled to life.

“Fire,” a young girl’s voice said calmly over the loudspeaker. “Fire.”

And Charles blinked awake.


	30. "We've Had An Inordinate Amount Of Good Fortune"

“Fire!” Sensible shouted, running through the dormitory. “Fire!”

Phil was the first worker to wake up. He rubbed his eyes and frowned, as if waking from a bad dream.

“Why does my mouth taste like gum?” he said.

One by one, the workers at the Lucky Smells Lumbermill woke up from their hypnotic trance. Sensible, you see, had realized that the reason the workers had been warned never to talk about a terrible fire wasn’t because it was too terrible, but because the word “fire” would awaken them from a state of complacency induced by Dr. Orwell’s hypnosis.

“Sir is using you!” she shouted to the dazed lumbermill workers. “He’s giving you gum for lunch! He’s paying you in coupons! His optometrist has hypnotized you so none of you would rebel!”

She watched the workers’ expressions shift from confusion to anger. One worker grabbed a debarker that was hanging from the dormitory wall.

“Let’s get ‘em!” he shouted.

As the mill workers assembled makeshift weapons, another worker showed Sensible an old intercom on the wall.

“This reaches every corner of the lumbermill,” she said. “We can un-hypnotize everyone at once this way.”

She held Sensible up so she could reach the intercom.

“Fire,” Sensible said into the receiver. “Fire.”

“Come on!”

The two of them hurried to join the angry mob making their way to the lumbermill. Sensible let the woman carry her there. It was nicer than she had expected, given the circumstances. No one had carried her in a long time.

“We want fair wages!” the mob cried. “We want to see our families! We want to rebuild this town!”

“Curses!” Dr. Orwell spat. She sheathed her sword, grabbed the two door handles and, with difficulty, pulled the door closed. Then she pushed her jeweled cane behind the handles, barring it shut.

“You may have un-hypnotized my workers and saved Charles,” she said, “but there will still be a fatal accident at the lumbermill tonight.”

She picked up Sunny by the scruff of her uniform and held her high in the air. With her free hand, she opened the metal grating in front of an enormous furnace, and the Baudelaire children’s eyes watered at the sudden heat.

“You think you’re so clever, but you only see in black and white,” she said. “Just like your parents. They were shortsighted, too. With their, ‘You can’t hypnotize people!’ And, ‘What about free will?’ And, ‘We’re going to kick you out and have your license revoked, and if we ever have children, we’re never going to let you anywhere near them!’ Well, I showed them. I’ll show everyone. It was never about the fortune, Baudelaires. It’s about—”

The mob burst through the barricaded door.

“Put Sunny down!” Sensible shouted.

She picked up the two broken pieces of Dr. Orwell’s cane. Swiping them left and right, she drove Dr. Orwell backward, toward the fiery furnace. The mob pressed closer and closer, and Dr. Orwell began to look very frightened indeed.

No one was sure who pushed Dr. Orwell. It might have been multiple people possessed by mob psychology, a different kind of hypnotism than the sort that Dr. Orwell performed. But no matter who did the deed, Dr. Orwell _was_ pushed. She dropped Sunny and fell backward into the furnace, screaming horribly as she went.

There was a dreadful silence.

“Why, that’s Foreman Flacutono!” one worker said. “He’s been yelling at us and waking us up by banging pots together!”

“And that’s Charles!” another worker said. “His partner has been paying us in coupons and gum!”

“And those are the Baudelaires!” a third worker cried. “Their parents burned down the town!”

The mob roared in anger. The same woman who had carried Sensible all the way to the lumbermill walked over to the furnace and raised up her own debarker.

“This is payback,” she said.

She lowered the debarker into the furnace. The wooden handle caught fire, and the woman drew the debarker from the furnace, smiling darkly.

She tossed the makeshift torch to the ground. The sawdust quickly ignited, and the mob cheered. They stampeded out the door, going back the way they came. Somehow, amidst the smoke and confusion, Shirley and Foreman Flacutono slipped out of the lumbermill along with the mob, but no one noticed. They had bigger things to worry about.

The double doors slammed shut, and a lock clicked into place. The flames around the Baudelaire children were already knee-high, and they were growing higher and higher.

“ _No!_ ” Lilac threw herself against the door. “Let us out! Let us _out_!”

“Those bastards!” Nick shouted. “They locked the doors from the outside!”

“Does anyone have any water?” Sensible asked. She tried to use her coat to smother the flames, but it was too late. The fire had spread to the stacks of freshly-cut wooden planks and the walls of the lumbermill. The wooden building had gone up like a match.

Charles shook his head.

Lilac took off her uniform jacket and tied it around her nose and mouth. She jammed her fingers in the crevice between the two doors, trying to force them open.

“We need to get out of here!” she shouted. “Any ideas?”

Violet fumbled with her ribbon. She coughed on the smoke as she tied up her hair.

She tried to think, even though the heat was making it nearly impossible. Klaus couldn’t use his skeleton key; the lock was on the wrong side of the door. The doors were much too large to break down. And the fire, which was racing up and down all four walls of the lumbermill, was out of control.

“We can use a catapult,” she said. “Klaus, do you know how to use the stamping machine?”

“Not at all,” he said.

“Good,” said Violet, “because you’re going to cause another accident at this lumbermill. Follow me.”

She ran toward the stamping machine. But just before she reached it, a great plume of flame burst before her face. Violet put her arms out in front of her face to shield herself. The ceiling had caught fire.

“This way!” Klaus said, grabbing Violet’s wrist and leading her through a gap in the flames. The smoke swirled around them, black and boiling. Violet and Klaus were running blindly, relying on memory alone to find their way.

Finally, Klaus reached the stamping machine. He untied his uniform jacket from around his face and wrapped it around his hands instead, hoping the heavy-duty fabric would be thick enough. He grabbed the huge flat stone with both hands.

“You can’t do that on your own.”

Nick appeared on Klaus’s left, his hands wrapped in the same way. He grabbed the other end of the stone, and smoke billowed from his bunched-up jacket. They wouldn’t have much time before the fabric was burned through.

“Are you scared?”

Klaus nodded.

“Get scared later,” Nick said. “Now lift.”

As Nick and Klaus lifted, the twins rolled a metal wheelbarrow towards them. Nick and Klaus dropped the stone onto the wheelbarrow with a resounding crash. Together, April and Colin slammed their weight onto the wheelbarrow’s handlebars. The stone sailed upward. It cut a beautiful arc through the smoke.

The crash of the mill-stone shook the entire lumbermill. Smoke poured out the massive hole in the doors. Lilac kicked the doors open, dragging Charles outside with her. The Baudelaires staggered outside, coughing and squinting in the moonlight, and made their way into the Finite Forest. They stood just behind the tree line, inhaling lungfuls of cold air.

“I’ll never set a fire again,” Sensible whispered.

The lumbermill was entirely ablaze. The nine Baudelaires and Charles watched the foundations shake, harder and harder until they finally gave out. And in a great plume of smoke, the building fell.

* * *

Violet and Lilac walked down the main street of Paltryville, which looked more yellow than gray in the early morning light. When they had first arrived in town, there had been two tall smokestacks to welcome them. Now there were only two tall towers of smoke.

“I hope Charles can get through to Mr. Poe,” Violet said. “I’m surprised there’s even a working telephone left in this town.”

“I wonder where we’ll be sent next,” Lilac said. “If I remember correctly, Mr. Poe said something about a boarding school before dropping us off at the train station.”

“Wherever we go, I hope Count Olaf doesn’t follow us there.”

“He’s found us three times already,” Lilac said. “He’ll find us again, and he’ll bring another one of his terrible associates. You were right, Violet. The bald man is the worst of them.”

“The bald man?” Violet asked. “What does he have to do with any of this?”

“He was disguised as Foreman Flacutono,” Lilac said. “Why else would he have worn that ridiculous wig?”

“That’s… smart,” Violet said. “I didn’t realize that until now.”

Lilac shifted Sunny on her hip. Her boot caught on a loose stone and she tripped, falling forward to her knees. Sunny fell to the ashy ground with a cry.

Violet knelt down and helped Lilac back to her feet.

“Are you alright?”

“I’m fi—”

Lilac stopped herself and thought for a moment.

“No, I’m not,” she admitted. “I—I haven’t been sleeping.”

“At all?” Violet said, alarmed.

“In fits and starts,” Lilac said. “But I haven’t slept through the whole night since Uncle Monty died. But I’ll be fine, really.”

“No,” Violet said. “That’s not fine.”

She picked up Sunny, and started to pick the gravel out of her little hands.

“Leave the babies to me,” she said. “At least until you’re more rested.”

“Violet, I can’t do that—”

“I won’t hear it,” Violet said. “Let me take care of Solitude and Sunny. For now, you need to sleep and work things out with Colin.”

Lilac looked incredulous. “We’re past working things out.”

“That’s not true,” Violet said. “All you have to do is look him in the eyes and have a conversation.”

“But what do I say?”

“Tell him the truth,” said Violet, looking Lilac right in the eyes. “Tell him how you’re feeling, how you’re tired of fighting. Tell him how you want to be friends again, and how you two can make things better if you both work at it. Tell him how much you miss him. Then give him a peace offering.”

“A peace offering?”

“It doesn’t have to be important,” Violet said. “It can be something silly. Like…”

She thought for a second, then reached up and untied the purple ribbon in her hair. She handed the ribbon to Lilac, who took it with a slightly confused expression on her face.

“Colin doesn’t use hair ribbons, Violet.”

“It’s just an example,” Violet said. “Give it to him and say, ‘I want you to have this.’ That’s all you need to say. He’ll understand.”

Then she smiled. “You got this, L.”

* * *

“I told her I was sorry.”

“And then what did you do?” April asked.

“I didn’t do anything,” Colin said. “Lilac said she didn’t care about my apology.”

She stared at him. “Colin, you’re an _idiot_ ,” she said. “You can’t just say sorry and then be done with it. You have to follow through.”

Colin followed April and Solitude walked into a washroom in Paltryville’s only motel, thinking about what his twin had just said. When they entered the washroom, they glimpsed their own reflections in the mirror. April’s long hair was tangled and covered in sawdust. Colin’s new glasses were hanging askew. Solitude’s ginger hair was singed from the lumbermill fire. But that wasn’t what caught the twins off guard.

“Are you taller than me?” April asked.

“What?” Colin said. “Of course not.”

“No, I—I think you are.”

She picked up Solitude and placed her in the sink. “Sol, be the judge.”

April and Colin stood back to back. Solitude placed a hand on each of their heads, measuring.

“Haut,” she said, which probably meant, “I hate to break it to you, April, but Colin is definitely a couple inches taller.”

“No way,” said Colin. “I refuse to believe that.”

“Just _accept_ it,” April said. “You’re finally taller than me. This is literally everything you’ve ever wanted. And you know what? I’ll be nice and I won’t even complain about it.”

“I don’t get it,” he said. “What could have caused it?”

“Time?” said Solitude.

“It’s been a wild few months,” April said.

“Yeah.” Colin laughed. “It really has.”

“And it’s fine,” she said. “It’s fine. I went through this same thing when Nick passed me last year. I can deal with it.”

“That’s… good, I guess.”

“ _But_ ,” she went on, “the day that Klaus outgrows me—that’s the day I’m moving out. I can’t stick around in a family where I’m in the bottom half regarding height.”

“Serpentes,” Solitude said, which probably meant, “Then we’ll find Ink and adopt him, so you won’t be in the bottom half until _I_ outgrow you.”

“What about Sensible?” Colin asked. “You forgot about her.”

“Court,” she said, which probably meant, “Sensible is never going to be taller than April.”

“Oh, really?” said April. “How do you know?”

“Lulu,” Solitude replied, which probably meant, “I can just tell.”

* * *

“I wish I was taller,” Sensible said, swinging her legs over the edge of the chair in the Baudelaires’ shabby motel room.

“Me too,” said Klaus. “It’s really quite unfortunate.”

He was soaking his hands in a basin of ice water. The burns from the stamping machine would leave scars, Sensible had told him the night before. He and Nick would finally share something in common.

“We’ll get there one day, you and me both,” she said. “And when that happens, we won’t be unfortunate at all.”

“That’s very sensible, Sensible,” he said. “We have each other, and that makes us very fortunate indeed.”

“Very fortunate, definitely,” Sensible agreed. “Lucky, even.”

Klaus’s smile disappeared, and his eyes went very wide.

“Inordinate, I mean,” Sensible said hurriedly, and Klaus’s eyes returned back to normal. “We’ve had an inordinate amount of good fortune.”

She glanced at the empty basin of water next to Klaus. “Where’s Nick? He should be soaking.”

Klaus stood up and dried his hands on his sweater. “Let’s go find him.”

They stopped in the washroom to collect the twins, then headed outside to look for their missing brother. The five of them found Violet, Lilac, and Sunny waiting outside the telephone booth, and Lilac suggested they look for Nick on the rooftops.

She was right. The Baudelaire children found Nick sitting on the roof of the motel, gazing at the gloomy blackness of the Finite Forest and wondering if his life would ever get any better. He stood up when he saw his siblings approaching.

“Things will get better,” Lilac said, as if she could read his mind.

“Like what?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “But there’s always something.”

“The way I’ve been looking at it, our lives can only get better from here,” Klaus said. “Anything would be better than being forced to work in a lumbermill, hypnotized by an evil optometrist, and almost burned alive.”

“I wonder what Dr. Orwell meant anyway,” Colin said, “about her motives never being about the Baudelaire fortune.”

“It makes me wonder what our parents’ history with this place really is,” April said.

“Nick found out,” Violet said. “I forgot to ask you before, Nick. What did you read in _The History of Lucky Smells Lumbermill_?”

Nick looked down at his shoes. “It said that our parents were unequivocally responsible,” he said. “But we had to put the book away before… before I could finish the sentence.”

“So they might not have been responsible at all,” April said. “They might have been unequivocally responsible for putting out the fire and helping the survivors get back on their feet.”

Lilac smiled. “It’s good to know our parents weren’t arsonists after all.”

“But we don’t know for sure,” Violet said. “For all we know, Mother and Father were unequivocally responsible for setting the fire and destroying Paltryville.”

“That’s not possible,” said Colin.

“Why not?”

“Because we know our parents,” he said. “They would never do something so terrible.”

“But maybe they would have,” Sensible said quietly. She touched the box of matches inside her coat.

“If we’ve learned anything these past few months, it’s that we know much less about our parents than we thought we did,” Klaus said. “I don’t think it’s impossible to think they may have set fire to a town.”

“They might have been hypnotized by Dr. Orwell,” said Violet, “or succumbed to mob psychology like those lumbermill workers.”

Solitude shook her head. “Dorb,” she said, which probably meant, “They would have told us if something like that had happened to them!”

“Our parents kept secrets from us,” Nick said. “They didn’t tell us that they had ever visited Paltryville, but April has the evidence right in that photograph. Maybe they never told us because they were ashamed.”

“ _I’m_ ashamed of you four,” Lilac said. “To think our parents were arsonists! Have you forgotten all they did for us? How much they loved us?”

“Our parents could never have started a fire like that,” April agreed. “Father once told me he thought a match was a wicked thing. He wouldn’t have said that if he had burned down an entire town.”

“A match is only as wicked as the person who’s using it,” Sensible said. “Maybe Mother and Father thought they were doing the right thing.”

“Starting a fire is never the right thing,” Colin said. “Endangering people’s lives is never the right thing. Destroying a town is never the right thing. Our parents must have known that. There’s no way they burned down Paltryville.”

“If you’re so certain,” Nick said, “why don’t you ask them?”

“Schism!” Sunny shrieked suddenly, and everyone knew what she meant. She meant, “Stop arguing like this! You’re going to tear our family apart.”

“You’re right, Sunny,” said Lilac. “It does us no good to fight with each other.”

“We need to stick together,” said April. “What’s that thing Samuel Beckett said?”

“ ‘I can't go on,’ ” said Klaus. “ ‘I’ll go on.’ ”

“Let’s go on,” said April. “Together.”

She walked to the edge of the roof and rose up to her tiptoes, poised in preparation for flight. Her siblings joined her, looking out at the Finite Forest. They saw the train wind its way through the trees toward Paltryville and, looking further, the horseradish factory built from wood that had been prepared at Lucky Smells Lumbermill. They saw the sun reflecting on the surface of Lake Lachrymose. Although they couldn’t see it, the children knew that further, beyond the forest and the lake, was the city, and all the memories that surrounded it.

The Baudelaires would go on together. They would hope for the best.


	31. References

**Chapter One: “Your Parents Have Perished In A Terrible Fire”**

> During one of her parents’ dinner parties, Violet, the eldest, had overheard a man she **vaguely recognized** remark that **three children were plenty** , and why hadn’t Bertrand and his wife listened to his excellent advice.

In L.S. to B.B. #5 of _The Beatrice Letters_ , Lemony writes, “I will love you if you have a child, and I will love you if you have two children, or three children, or even more, although **I personally think three is plenty**.” Beatrice obviously took this recommendation as a challenge. Violet “vaguely recognizing” Lemony references how **she recognizes Jacques Snicket’s name** in _The Vile Village_.

> This **series of unfortunate events** began on a gray and cloudy morning, when the nine young Baudelaires took a rickety trolley along to the seashore.

Obviously.

> Violet was fifteen years old, right-handed, and a good deal taller than the rest of her siblings. This meant that her younger siblings looked up to her, both literally and figuratively ( **which is always a useful distinction to learn** ).

In _The Bad Beginning_ , Lemony goes on a tangent about **the difference between “literally” and “figuratively,”** and a running joke in the Netflix show is that Count Olaf doesn’t know the difference between the two.

> “The stable systematics of this experiment,” said Violet, with more than a little exasperation in her voice, “are the size and shape of the rock, and of course the ocean’s behavior. I’m testing the strength of my left versus my right hand. I’m trying to become ambidextrous. **Being able to use both hands equally well is surprisingly useful.** ”

A reference to **Kevin** from _The Carnivorous Carnival_ , who believes his ambidextrousness makes him a freak.

> He wore reading glasses when he remembered them, which wasn’t often, and anyway **he had a tendency to lose his glasses** while hiking or swimming or jumping off cliffs without a parachute.

**Klaus doesn’t wear glasses** in the 2004 movie, and I’ve chosen to just roll with it instead of complain about it.

> Solitude, which was **a fancy name for being all by yourself** , was one of the babies of the Baudelaire family.

This comes from a passage in _Why Is This Night Different From All Other Nights?_ : “It was a mystery, like what the S stood for in Theodora’s name. I kept walking, with nothing but solitude for company. **‘Solitude’ is a fancy name for being all by yourself.** It's not a bad name, I thought.”

> Being only eleven (and **too short to reach some of the top shelves** , even with the help of a ladder), Klaus had of course not read all of the books in the Baudelaire library, but he had read a great many of them.

It’s revealed in _The Grim Grotto_ that **the Baudelaire parents hid V.F.D. books on the top shelf** in their library, because Klaus couldn’t reach that high.

> “Sunny,” he said to his baby sister, who was chewing on a sandal, “I’m not sure I understand this passage of _Julius Caesar_.”
> 
> “ **Lire**?” Sunny said, which probably meant, “Could you read it to me?”

“Lire” means “ **to read** ” in French.

> “ **Ides**!” Sunny said, which probably meant, “Only one way to find out. You be Caesar, and I’ll be Brutus. _En garde_!”

A reference to the **Ides of March** (March 15), the day Julius Caesar was assassinated.

> “It’s a nice day,” April said, trying to make conversation.
> 
> “It is a nice day, **Lilac**.” Mr. Poe said absently, staring out at the empty beach.
> 
> “ **April** ,” she corrected him.

Malina Weissman, who played Violet in the Netflix show, looks very similar to Emily Browning, who played Violet in the 2004 movie. More often than not, **Mr. Poe can’t tell the difference between them**.

> “The exact cause has not been determined yet,” Mr. Poe said. “All I know is that neither the official fire department nor the **volunteer fire department** arrived in time to stop the blaze.”

A reference to **V.F.D.** , taken from “The Bad Beginning: Part One.”

> “ **Scope**!” she said, which probably meant, “What’s that oddly shaped object lying in your father’s open desk drawer?”

“Scope” is a shortened form of the word “ **telescope** ,” which is similar to a spyglass.

> The ring was beautiful, although it had been warped and twisted by the fire. A spindly, curlicued letter B— **or was it an R?** April couldn’t tell—was etched in the metal.

Yeah, that’s **R.’s ring**.

* * *

**Chapter Two: “First Impressions Are Often Entirely Wrong”**

> “That’s a horrible thing to say,” said Lilac. “You heard Mr. Poe. It was a dreadful accident, nothing more.”
> 
> “ **Accident, schmaccident.** ”

In _The Wide Window_ , Lemony narrates, “If you don't care about something, one way to demonstrate your feelings is to say the word and then repeat the word with the letters **S-C-H-M** replacing the real first letters.”

> The room in which they found themselves was the dirtiest they had ever seen, from the stuffed head of a lion nailed to the wall to the bowl of **bitter apple** cores which sat on a small wooden table.

The Baudelaire parents had engineered **bitter apples** on the Island as a cure for Medusoid Mycelium poisoning.

> “We had a father,” said Colin.
> 
> “And a mother,” said April. “ **Her name was B—** ”
> 
> “Yes, I know,” Count Olaf interrupted. “Remarkable woman. Flammable.”

**Beatrice**.

> Sunny crawled over to the pile of rocks and bit one. It exploded, dusting everyone with a fine rain of tiny gray rock particles.
> 
> “ **Loess** ,” she said, which probably meant, “Not hard enough.”

Loess is a type of sediment that is known as the **most fragile rock in the world**.

> “We’ll cut the sweaters apart and sew three of them together to make one blanket,” Lilac said. She used a rock fragment to draw guidelines on the sweater. “Sunny, can you bite on the dotted lines?”
> 
> “ **Versace** ,” Sunny said, which probably meant, “I would be happy to.”

Gianni Versace was an Italian **fashion designer**.

* * *

**Chapter Three: “Do You Think Anything Will Feel Like Home Again?”**

> “ **Paint the fence** ,” Violet read from the note. “ **Wax the automobile, sand the floor, paint the house.** Signed, O.”

The tasks on Count Olaf’s list of chores are the tasks Mr. Miyagi used to train Daniel Larusso in karate in the movie **_The Karate Kid_**.

> “Well,” said Lilac, “ **at least we’re not being eaten by a bear**.”
> 
> “Thanks,” said Nick, letting the note fall to the dirty floor. “That’s really helpful.”

In _The Wide Window_ , Lemony narrates that saying to yourself, “ **Well, at least I’m not being eaten by a bear** ” is a way to put your troubles into perspective, and it rarely works.

> “Do you remember,” Violet said, “how frightened our parents were?”
> 
> Lilac nodded. “All the way down the stairs, **they were whispering something about how he had found them and how to get all of us into a tunnel**. Then they saw the burnt toast, and they laughed and laughed.”

If you’re a member of V.F.D. and you smell smoke in your house, there’s definitely going to be some panicking involved. The **tunnel** , which the Baudelaires discover in _The Ersatz Elevator_ , goes between the Baudelaire mansion and 667 Dark Avenue.

> “ **Who could that be at this hour?** ” April asked.

A reference to **_Who Could That Be At This Hour?_**.

> Klaus rolled his eyes. “Of course you have. I’m interested in the works of **Marcel Proust, in the original French** if you have it.”

In “The Bad Beginning: Part One,” Klaus asks Violet about a quote from **Marcel Proust** ’s _In Search of Lost Time_ : “Happiness is beneficial for the body, but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind.” Violet suggests he read it in the original French.

> “ **Seuss** ,” said Sunny, which probably meant, “Please don’t forget to pick out a picture book for me.”

Dr. Seuss was the author of several **children’s picture books** , such as _The Cat in the Hat_ and _Green Eggs and Ham_.

> “Well, my private library is open to you whenever you’d like. There are sections on everything from Italian cuisine to **the world’s most threatening fungus** ,” said Justice Strauss.

A reference to the **Medusoid Mycelium** , taken from “The Bad Beginning: Part One.”

> “That’s a very good point. But first I think we’d better find a good recipe, don’t you? I always find cooking for family to be something of a mitzvah. You children have had such sorrow in your lives already. You deserve the blessing of a new family with Count Olaf, and if you don’t mind my saying so, with me.”
> 
> “ **Adank** ,” Sunny said, which probably meant, “We don’t mind your saying so.”

“A dank” (אדאנק) means “ **thank you** ” in Yiddish.

> “Puttanesca!”
> 
> “Sensible **Presley** Baudelaire!” Lilac exclaimed. “That’s a **very bad word** to call your brother.”
> 
> “No, it’s pasta puttanesca,” said Nick. “That’s Italian for ‘very few ingredients.’ ”
> 
> Violet frowned. “ **No, it’s not.** ”

**Presley Smith** played Sunny in the Netflix show, and the Italian word “puttanesca” roughly translates to “ **prostitute**.”

> Violet roasted the garlic, Lilac washed the capers, April chopped the anchovies, **Colin made a ceiling-high column of flame erupt from the stove** , Nick peeled the tomatoes, and Klaus pitted the olives.

**Klaus has some issues with the stove** in “The Bad Beginning: Part One.”

> “We don’t have any!” April cried. “We made puttanesca sauce!”
> 
> “ **Pannacotta** ,” Sunny said, which probably meant, “And chocolate pudding for dessert.”

Panna cotta is a type of Italian **custard** , similar to pudding.

> Nick got up and went to the grimy window. After some maneuvering, he managed to pry it open. Violet flinched at the cold night air.
> 
> “Nick, close the window,” she said, visibly tense. “ **Remember what happened when we left the library window open overnight, and it rained.** ”

What happened is that **the rain ruined an atlas** , and the Baudelaire parents were furious at their children. This is supposedly because the atlas was irreplaceable, but we later learn in _The Grim Grotto_ that it was because Klaus had found the Baudelaire parents’ hidden V.F.D. books.

> “Do you remember when Mother and Father went to that **ball in Winnipeg**?” she said quietly. “And we thought they’d abandoned us because they didn’t even write? And then we found out that they’d written a long letter that had just gotten lost in the mail. Do you remember how guilty we felt for thinking bad thoughts about them?”

A reference to the **Duchess of Winnipeg** and her Masked Balls.

> “I promise it’ll be alright,” she said to her siblings.
> 
> “Doll fight?” Colin said. “We haven’t played with dolls in years.”
> 
> “Walls have ears?” Klaus said. “All I see is that painting of an eye.”
> 
> “Fainting on rye?” Nick joined in. “I prefer ham and sourdough.”
> 
> Lilac rolled her eyes. “ **This game is so juvenile.** ”

The Baudelaires are playing **Beethoven** , a game that Lemony and Jacques played and was mentioned in _All the Wrong Questions_. To play the game, each person pretends to mishear the last person’s statement.

* * *

**Chapter Four: “There Are Countless Types Of Books In This World”**

> “We should just shoot him,” Nick said. He hoisted up his axe like a rifle. “Then we would have the house, the fortune, and no Count Olaf.”
> 
> “That’s a preposterous idea,” Violet said. “ **Guns don’t exist in this city.** ”

**Guns don’t exist** in the Snicketverse (other than in _La Forza del Destino_ ).

> “There’s no use **entertaining such notions** ,” Violet said. “You heard what Mr. Poe said. Our parents’ will said we were to be raised by our closest living relative.”

In _The Vile Village_ , Lemony claims that **entertaining a notion** is a dangerous thing to do because “nobody knows what an idea will do when it goes off to entertain itself.”

> “ **Pumice** ,” Sunny said, which probably meant, “He gave us rocks instead of toys.”
> 
> “ **Ardere** ," Solitude said, which probably meant, “He asked young children to cook on a stove.”

Pumice is a type of **volcanic rock** , and “ardere” means “ **to burn** ” in Latin. The word “ardere” is also referenced in _Shouldn’t You Be In School?_ as the original Latin term from which the word “arson” is derived.

> “You will participate in this theatrical performance," he said. "I would prefer it if you would **_volunteer_** to do so, but as I believe Mr. Poe explained to you, I can order you to participate and you must obey.”

A reference to **V.F.D.** and Violet’s occupation as a volunteer.

> Count Olaf shrugged. “Have you happened to see a **white key** around the house?” he asked, obviously trying to sound nonchalant. “It belongs to **someone very important to me**. I thought she had left it in the automobile, but I couldn’t find it there.”

Count Olaf is referring to Sharon Haines’s **skeleton key** , which Ellington Feint may have given to **Kit Snicket** (the “very important” person) after the end of _Why Is This Night Different From All Other Nights?_.

> “He must be up to something,” Colin said as soon as Count Olaf was gone.
> 
> “ **Gamos** ,” Solitude agreed.

“Gamos” (γάμος) means “ **marriage** ” in Greek.

> “ **Cucumerina**!” Solitude shrieked, which probably meant, “I’d much prefer gardening to sitting around watching my siblings struggle through books about law and theater.”

_Trichosanthes cucumerina_ is the scientific name for the **snake gourd**.

> “ **Loam**!” Sunny objected, which probably meant, “Dirt? I’m past that phase!”

Loam is a type of fertile **soil**.

* * *

**Chapter Five: “A Stick Behind A Stubborn Mule”**

> Late at night, after his sisters had gone to bed, Klaus pulled the book out from under his shirt. He struck a match from a box that Sensible had found downstairs, which illuminated the room with a strange green light.
> 
> Nick passed his fingers through the **dark green smoke** drifting through the air. “Weird.”

The green match is one of V.F.D.’s **Verdant Flammable Devices** , used in _The Slippery Slope_.

> “There’s a section on nuptial law. Page **392** ,” Colin said.

In the **Dewey Decimal System** , the section for family, courtship, and marriage is 392.

> “Sorry. I’m just so **nervous**.”
> 
> “ **Anxious** ,” Nick corrected.
> 
> “There actually isn’t really a difference—”

In _The Ersatz Elevator_ , Lemony describes the difference between the words “nervous” and “anxious.” In my opinion, **there’s functionally no difference**.

> “Me? I’m just having my morning coffee, although I can’t seem to find the **sugar bowl** , which is problematic if it’s going to be served at the performance. Does Violet like coffee?”
> 
> “She prefers tea.”
> 
> Olaf scoffed. “Of course she does. **It runs in the family.** ”

A reference to the **sugar bowl** , taken from “The Bad Beginning: Part Two.” Violet preferring tea over coffee references both how **Lemony hates coffee** in _All the Wrong Questions_ and how Kit Snicket believed that tea should be “as bitter as wormwood and sharp as a two-edged sword.” By saying a love of tea “runs in the family,” Count Olaf is dropping a hint that Lemony is Violet’s biological father, making Violet a **Snicket**.

> “Yes,” Count Olaf continued, “it certainly is strange to find a child missing. Especially one so small and helpless. **When did you see her last?** ”

A reference to **_When Did You See Her Last?_**.

> She tried to grab the ring, but he held it high out of her reach.
> 
> “Well, I’ve requisitioned it,” he said. “I’m going to present it to your sister on our joyful wedding day. **It’s a ring fit for a duchess.** ” He smiled wickedly. “Or a countess.”

A reference to the **Duchess of Winnipeg**.

> “You won’t get away with this,” April said through gritted teeth.
> 
> “Oh,” he said, using a **hackneyed phrase**. “I already have.”

In _The Reptile Room_ , Lemony explains the meaning of “ **hackneyed phrase** ” when he uses the phrase “Meanwhile, back at the ranch.”

> “ **Cake** ,” Solitude said, which probably meant, “Perhaps it won’t be so bad. Marie Antoinette married the Prince of France when she was only fourteen.”

Marie Antoinette was famous for the saying “ **Let them eat cake** ,” even though she never actually said it. She _did_ marry Louis XVI when she was fourteen and he was fifteen, but they didn’t consummate the marriage for seven years.

> “And anyway it doesn’t matter what you would have done,” said Violet. “We can’t change the past. I’m going to marry Count Olaf tomorrow. I **volunteered**.”

A reference to **V.F.D.** and Violet’s occupation as a volunteer.

* * *

**Chapter Six: “Let Me Keep My Promise”**

> One of the white-faced women took the driver’s seat. She stomped down on the accelerator, sending the automobile careening down the street. Whenever they hit a bump in the road (which was often), **the littlest elf** on the dashboard burst into maniacal giggles.

**_The Littlest Elf_** is a book referenced multiple times in the book series. It also appears in the opening sequence and the train scene in the 2004 movie.

> The white-faced woman drove for at least an hour, then brought the automobile to an abrupt stop in the middle of a set of train tracks in front of the **Last Chance General Store**.

The **Last Chance General Store**  is a store that appears in _The Hostile Hospital_.

> “Soda, soda, soda,” said the first woman. “What flavors?”
> 
> “How about **parsley**?”

In _The Ersatz Elevator_ , the Baudelaires drink **parsley soda** because it’s ‘in.’

> “Do you know how to pick a lock?” Klaus asked.
> 
> “ **I know how to throw a rock through a window.** ”

In _Who Could That Be At This Hour?_ , Lemony mentions that he received a grade of Incomplete in his lockpicking class because he **threw a rock through a window** to get inside a building.

> “Writing down all of your evil ideas in one place is going to backfire on you one day,” Violet thought aloud. “ **You might have to redo an entire years-long plan from scratch because of it.** ”

Daniel Handler had to **re-outline a large chunk of _The End_** because of a throwaway line in _The Bad Beginning_ where he mentioned that Klaus had gone through Count Olaf’s papers in the tower room.

> “ **Losiento** ,” Sunny mumbled through the tape, which probably meant, “I’m sorry your invention didn’t work.”

“Lo siento” means “ **I’m sorry** ” in Spanish.

> “It’s the end of Act Two! Why aren’t the orphans in their costumes?” he hissed to the two white-faced women, who were sipping bottles of **parsley soda**. “I saw Geraldine Julienne in the audience, so everything has to be perfect. **I can’t have the star reporter of _The Daily Punctilio_ write a bad review of my show again!**”

A reference to **parsley soda**. As for the “bad review,” Count Olaf is referring to **Lemony’s review of his play** that led to Lemony being framed for Count Olaf’s crimes and everything going to hell.

* * *

**Chapter Seven: “It’s Time To Crash A Wedding”**

> **Meanwhile, back at the ranch** , Lilac, Nick, and Klaus Baudelaire were frantically trying to pry open the doors of Count Olaf’s locked automobile.

“ **Meanwhile, back at the ranch** ” is a phrase used in _The Reptile Room_.

> “Mr. Poe, we’re on the train tracks and the train is coming!” he shouted.
> 
> “ **Rain is drumming?** ”
> 
> “No, _the train is coming!_ ” Nick said. “We’re going to be hit by a train!”

A reference to **Beethoven**.

> “Klaus,” she said, “you’ve read books on trains. What do we do?”
> 
> Nick stared at her. “ **Lilac, you’ve been taking apart model train sets since you were literally two years old.** ”

**Violet asks this question in the 2004 movie** even though, as an inventor, she would already know a lot about trains. I’m salty about it.

> “I’ve read about trains in **_Anna Karenina_** ,” Klaus said, “and **_Murder on the Orient Express_** , and _The Little Engine That Could_. But I haven’t the faintest clue what to do when a train is driving straight toward you.”

**_Anna Karenina_** is used for a Vernacularly Fastened Device in _The Slippery Slope_. A lot of _Why Is This Night Different From All Other Nights?_ , which takes place on a train and is about a murder, is inspired by **_Murder on the Orient Express_**.

> Nick closed his eyes and tried to imagine his parents’ library. Trains were in Section **625**. That was the section with the model planes on the windowsill and the funny little **black seahorse statue**.

In the **Dewey Decimal System** , the section for trains and railroads is 625. The black seahorse statue is the statue of the **Bombinating Beast**.

> “Found it!” Klaus pulled something small and white out of the upholstery of the ripped passenger seat. “ **Skeleton key**.”
> 
> Lilac snatched it from him, barely stopping to look at the “ **S.H.** ” engraved into the key.

This is **Sharon Haines’s skeleton key**.

> “Do you even know how to drive?” Nick asked.
> 
> “I drove Father’s automobile around the **Partial Foods** parking lot a few times,” she said. “Seat belts on.”

**Partial Foods** is a grocery store in Stain’d-by-the-Sea (and a play on Whole Foods).

> “Solitude, stop!” Outside on the front steps of the theater, Sensible grabbed her younger sister’s shoulders. “What are you doing?”
> 
> Solitude looked Sensible dead in the eyes. “ **Abagnale** ,” she said, which probably meant, “Jailbreak.”

Frank Abagnale Jr. is a former con man who famously **broke out of prison**.

> Solitude took off down the sidewalk as fast as her short little legs could carry her. She raced through the theater district, the financial district, and a produce stand that sold **very fresh dill**.

A reference to **V.F.D.** , taken from “The Wide Window: Part One.”

> Sensible threw the deck down at the hook-handed man’s boots. He stopped, confused.
> 
> “What’s this?”
> 
> “ **Sphinx**.”
> 
> “You want to play cards with me?”

The Sphinx is a **monster in Greek mythology** who guards the city of Thebes, allowing entrance only to those who can solve her riddle.

> “Sol!” Sunny shrieked with joy, which probably meant, “I’m so glad you’re here. I tried to bite through the bars for hours, but they’re too strong. I chipped one of my teeth, and the bars didn’t even bend.”
> 
> “ **Dent** ,” Solitude replied, which probably meant, “Don’t worry about your teeth. We’ll get you out of here.”

“Dente” means “ **tooth** ” in Latin. It’s also a pun, since Sunny had just mentioned not being able to bend, or dent, the bars of the birdcage.

> “ **Frollo** ,” Solitude said, which probably meant, “Don’t look down.”

Frollo is the name of the villain in _The Hunchback of Notre Dame_ , who dies by **falling off a balcony**.

> She scanned the room for possible inventing materials. Her eyes landed on the rope outside the window, the hook that Nick was holding, and the theater in the distance.
> 
> “We can still get to _The Marvelous Marriage_ on time,” she said, “using a **hawser**.”

There’s a **hawser** connecting the Mallahans’ lighthouse and the Sallis mansion in Stain’d-by-the-Sea, and Lemony uses it as a zip line in _Who Could That Be At This Hour?_.

> “I’m glad that you children have adjusted to life with your new father and are participating in family activities,” said Mr. Poe. “I talked to your sister less than an hour ago. She seems very happy and pursuing her mechanical interests. She was saying something about **drain plumbing** —”

A reference to **Beethoven**.

> “We’ll stand here for **the duration** ,” he said. “That means the whole time.”
> 
> “We know what the word ‘duration’ means,” Colin said crossly.
> 
> “And ‘the duration,’ ” April added, “doesn’t mean anything.”

In _Who Could That Be At This Hour?_ , Theodora says that she and Lemony will be staying at the Lost Arms “ **for the duration**.” Lemony points out that “for the duration” means nothing at all.

* * *

**Chapter Eight: “I’m Not Your Countess”**

> “Hurry up, April!” he hissed.
> 
> “I’m **hurryupping**!” she said, maneuvering the spyglass this way and that.

“ **Hurryupping** ” is a made-up word that the Haines family is known for saying.

> “He’s right,” said Jacquelyn. “There is a **vigorously fixed destination** your parents had in mind for you, and it is not with Count Olaf or Justice Strauss.”

A **V.F.D.** reference, taken from “The Bad Beginning: Part Two.”

> “Let me see that.” Gustav looked at the ring. “This is a very important **ring**. Your family got it from Jacquelyn’s family. It belonged to your mother, and now it belongs to you. This piece of jewelry is very precious. It just may be the reason you are alive,” he said. “Take good care of the **ring**.”
> 
> April stared at him. He winked. “ **I invented that one.** ”

Gustav’s statement is in Sebald Code (ten uncoded words between each coded word). It decodes to “ **Your mother is alive.** ”

> “The one I own is a copy,” said Jacquelyn, “meant to throw off anyone who might be looking for the real thing. Now, I’m afraid we have to leave. Gustav’s sister is waiting for us in the city. She’s investigating a case involving **arson, sapphires, and a dead triplet**.”

The case that Sally Sebald is investigating is **the burning of the Quagmire mansion** , which involves the Quagmires’ fortune in sapphires and Quigley, the supposedly dead triplet.

> “ **Rummy** ,” Solitude said, which probably meant, “If Sensible hadn’t distracted the hook-handed man with a game of cards, Sunny would never have been rescued.”

Rummy is a **card game** in which players try to form sets and sequences of cards.

* * *

**Chapter Nine: “No Harm Will Come To You Here”**

> “It’s a brand-new episode of your lives, Baudelaires,” Mr. Poe said. “In a few minutes you’ll be meeting your new guardian, Dr. Montgomery. He is your closest living relative and apparently should have been your guardian all along, according to a section of your deceased parents’ will that appears to have been written in **invisible ink**.”
> 
> “How can it appear if it’s invisible?” Klaus asked.
> 
> “Oh, **lemon juice and some heat** will do the trick.”

Cleo Knight is working on a formula for **invisible ink** throughout _All the Wrong Questions_. In _When Did You See Her Last?_ , Lemony tests some of it using **lemon juice and heat** , although he knows that such a method rarely works.

> Mr. Poe turned onto a stretch of road called Lousy Lane. It ran through a sickly gray orchard of **bitter apples** , and it encircled a horseradish factory, so the entire area smelled extremely pungent.

I was put on this earth for one reason, and that reason is to add the word “ **bitter** ” every time the word “apple” is used in the book series.

> “Do you know what sort of scientist Dr. Montgomery is?” Lilac asked, looking around the strange garden. She was thinking Dr. Montgomery might have a laboratory that would be of use to her.
> 
> “L., his garden is filled with hedges shaped like snakes,” Violet said. “ **What kind of scientist do you _think_ he is?**”

**Violet asks this question in the 2004 movie** even though there are snake topiaries all around her.

> Mr. Poe stepped up to the door and **rang the doorbell six times**.

This is **something Theodora does** in _All the Wrong Questions_.

> “Now, see his yellow-striped belly, a sign of camouflage and cowardice.”
> 
> “ **Poe** ,” Sunny said thoughtfully.
> 
> “ **Dodo**?” Solitude asked, which probably meant, “Can it really fly?”

“Poe” is referring to **Mr. Poe’s cowardice**. A dodo is an **extinct flightless bird**.

> “ **Kit** ,” said Solitude, which probably meant, “I’ve heard of a snake who has learned to drive a car so recklessly that it would run you over in the street and never stop to apologize.”

A reference to **Kit Snicket** , who drove a taxi through shrubbery in _The Penultimate Peril_.

* * *

**Chapter Ten: “Life Is A Conundrum Of Esoterica”**

> “Colin!” Lilac frowned when he put down his cup of tea. “Use a coaster, or you’ll leave—”
> 
> “— **an unsightly ring** on the table,” Colin finished. “I know, I know. Mother and Father never let us forget.”

In _The Bad Beginning: Rare Edition_ , Lemony comments that at the Baudelaire mansion, “it was always necessary to use a coaster underneath one’s beverage so as to not leave an **unsightly ring** on the wood.” Throughout the series, the use of coasters is a sign of being on the firefighting side of the schism.

> “And for good reason,” said Uncle Monty, taking Colin’s cup from him and **carefully placing it on top of one of the maps**.

This is the same map of the Mortmain Mountains that the Baudelaires found in Madame Lulu’s tent in _The Carnivorous Carnival_ , with a **coded stain** to mark the location of V.F.D. headquarters. This ties into the theory that Monty was in possession of the map before Jacques Snicket took it from the Reptile Room and gave it to Olivia Caliban.

> “I get to choose my side of the room first, since I’m older.”
> 
> She rolled her eyes. “Only by a few hours.”
> 
> “Doesn’t matter! I was still born first.”
> 
> “ **You _look_ younger than me.**”
> 
> “ **Not for long** ,” he countered.

Between the filming of the first and second seasons of the Netflix show, **Louis Hynes had a large growth spurt** and became taller than Malina.

> “We’re so high up,” she said. “I could build a pair of wings, jump out the window, and fly.”
> 
> “ **Icarus** ,” Sensible said, tugging on Lilac’s hand.

Icarus is a **figure in Greek mythology** who escaped prison using wax wings, but fell when he flew too close to the sun and his wings melted. The word can also refer to someone who fails due to being overly ambitious.

> Sensible cautiously stepped inside. “Mine?”
> 
> Lilac nodded. “All yours. Make sure to keep the windows shut. **You know how Violet feels about that.** ”

A reference to the **spoiled atlas** incident explained in _The Grim Grotto_.

> Solitude started fussing over a **miniscule frog** she had snuck out of the Reptile Room, and Lilac left to find Nick.

In @midas_touch_of_angst’s Six Baudelaires fanfiction, Solitude has a **pet frog** named Babbitt.

> Lilac peered over the edge. The swamp was bubbling and frothing. It was making a **curious and sinister noise** that sounded like a mixture of squelching and rumbling, as if it were a monster that had just swallowed a particularly large meal. The noise sent shivers up Lilac’s spine.

This entire scene by the Swarthy Swamp was inspired by **the scene by the fire pond** in _Shouldn’t You Be In School?_ , where Lemony hears the Bombinating Beast for the first time. He describes the sound as “an immense noise that rattled everything in my body.”

> He pointed at the bubbling swamp. “ **If there’s nothing out there, then what was that noise?** ”

One of the coded phrases used for **V.F.D. recruitment**.

* * *

**Chapter Eleven: “I Thought I Would Never Be Happy Again”**

> “ **Kindal**!” Sunny said, which probably meant, “Or maybe he's excited about all these things.”

“Kindal,” which was taken from _The Reptile Room_ , can kind of be sliced and diced to sound like “ **all kinds**.”

> Violet tackled the tall stack of letters that Uncle Monty had to mail to his associates, practicing writing their names and addresses with her left hand. By the time noon came, she could write the word **_Stain’d_** in cursive just as well with her left hand as she could with her right.

A reference to **Stain’d-by-the-Sea**.

> “Apple!” Solitude suddenly shrieked from across the room, where she and Sunny were playing with the Incredibly Deadly Viper. She held out a shiny red **apple** to the snake. It opened its mouth wide and swallowed the apple whole.

A bit of foreshadowing for _The End_ , where **the Incredibly Deadly Viper gives the Baudelaires an apple** and saves their lives.

> “Raw food _only_.”
> 
> Sensible sighed, disappointed. “ **Tartare**?”

Tartare is any kind of meat that is chopped up and **served raw**.

> “I'm not going to give you a tip,” the bearded man was saying to the taxi driver, “because you talk too much. Not everybody wants to hear about your boring **library** , you know.”
> 
> “That’s real mean of you, sir,” the taxi driver said. “We need those tips to keep our shelves stocked.”
> 
> “And,” added a voice that came surprisingly from underneath the seat, near the taxi’s foot pedals, “libraries aren’t boring. **In every library, there is a single book that can answer the question that burns like a fire in the** —”
> 
> The bearded man slammed the door shut.

The taxi drivers are **Pip and Squeak Bellerophon** from _All the Wrong Questions_ , who became librarians in Stain’d-by-the-Sea after Dashiell Qwerty’s death. In _Who Could That Be At This Hour?_ , Qwerty says, “ **In every library, there is a single book that can answer the question that burns like a fire in the mind**.” The quote was also written in the Verified Functional Dictionary in “The Miserable Mill: Part One.”

> “I can’t imagine it’s hard,” said Nick. “We’d just have to evade the authorities, fake our deaths in an unreliable newspaper, and spend the rest of our days hiding out in a series of anonymous, interchangeable motels.”
> 
> “Sounds like a lonely life,” said Sensible.
> 
> “It does,” Colin said miserably. “But we’d be safe.”

**This exchange** was taken from “The Penultimate Peril: Part Two,” in which Lemony unsuccessfully tries to convince the Baudelaires to leave with him in the taxi.

* * *

**Chapter Twelve: “Accidents Happen All The Time”**

> Colin blinked. “I’m afraid I don't quite follow you.”
> 
> “Me neither,” said Klaus. “What in **Nathaniel Hawthorne** ’s name are you talking about, Uncle Monty?”

Nathaniel Hawthorne was a **British author** known for writing _The Scarlet Letter_. Later in _The Reptile Room_ , Mr. Poe says his name as part of a list of blasphemes.

> “This is Stephano’s ticket. He’s not going to Peru with us after all. Tomorrow morning, I’m going to tell him that he needs to stay here and look after my specimens instead. At the same time, I’ll telephone a **dear associate** of mine, and she’ll take the reptiles away in her **taxi** so Stephano can’t get to them. That way we can run a successful expedition in peace. As you can see, your Uncle Monty has the situation in hand.”

Uncle Monty’s associate is **Kit Snicket** , who appears in her taxi in Chapter Sixteen.

> “Really?” Stephano said, feigning surprise. “Why, I had the impression we were leaving the country tomorrow. We’re going to Peru so **you little children can learn how to be volu** —”

The word Stephano was about to say was “volunteers,” tying into the theory that **the Baudelaires were being sent to Peru to begin their official V.F.D. training**.

> “ **Roadster** ,” Solitude said, which probably meant, “And anyway, our parents’ automobile burned up along with the rest of our belongings.”

In _All the Wrong Questions_ , Theodora calls her **green car** a roadster.

> Violet sighed. “But we can’t touch our fortune for three years. Three years is a long time to wait.”
> 
> “That’s true,” April said. “Three years ago, I had just started collecting comic books. It took a long time to build up that collection.”
> 
> “I remember,” Colin said. “You were interested in those comics about the **turtles who were named after Renaissance artists**.”
> 
> She nodded. “I liked the woman who was a computer programmer, because **she had the same name as me**.”

A reference to the **_Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles_** comics. In the 2014 movie adaptation of the comics, Malina Weissman played a young version of the **computer programmer April O’Neil**.

> “A da **ring** survivor of a zombie attack and his young son Rölf dispose of a wicked army of the undead,” Colin read from the poster. “Using barriers of oak, the brave townspeople capture the zombies in a trap, lighting a fire to destroy the zombies before the morning bell **ring** s.”

The movie poster for _Zombies in the Snow_ is in Sebald Code and decodes to “ **survivor of the fire** ,” letting V.F.D. members know the true purpose of the movie. I cheated a little bit by using “daring” as the first ring.

> The screen flickered to life, showing a snowy village. A group of townspeople appeared, accompanied by the ear-splitting ringing of a bell. As the movie began, April heard the sound of a pencil scratching on paper. She looked down the row and saw that Stephano was furiously **taking notes**. When he wasn’t writing, he was **counting on his fingers**. This note-taking, then counting, the note-taking again went on until another alarm bell sounded and all the townspeople fled.
> 
> April glanced at Uncle Monty, who didn’t seem to have noticed his assistant’s strange behavior.

**Count Olaf knows Sebald Code** (hence the note-taking and counting), while Uncle Monty doesn’t.

> “No, but I’ve read _Julius Caesar_ ,” said Klaus. “ _En garde!_ Remember our swordfight, Sunny?”
> 
> “ **Easypeasy** ,” Sunny replied, which probably meant, “I remember. I beat you, and I’m a baby.”

“Easy peasy, lemon squeezy” is a term meaning something is **very simple to accomplish**.

* * *

**Chapter Thirteen: “What Else Didn’t Our Parents Tell Us About?”**

> A music box on the mantel was playing a **nursery rhyme about a naval disaster**.

In _Lemony Snicket: The Unauthorized Autobiography_ , Lemony refers to the song “ **Row, Row, Row Your Boat** ” as “a well-known hymn of naval disaster.” It’s also the incorrect tune of “The Little Snicket Lad,” and Violet’s least favorite song.

* * *

**Chapter Fourteen: “Those Memories Won’t Ever Go Away”**

> “I’ll have a cup,” Dr. Lucafont said. “With two sugars. Nothing like a hearty cup of coffee before starting the day’s work.”
> 
> Stephano growled. “You fool, **you know we haven’t got any sugar**!”

Because there’s obviously only one **sugar bowl** in the entire Snicketverse and no other way of getting sugar.

> She turned around. **The peaches were gone** , as if they had been swallowed up by some underground monster.

At this point, **Quigley Quagmire** is hiding in the tunnel beneath Monty’s house. He reached through the trapdoor to steal the peaches.

> “ **Notat** ,” Sunny said, which probably meant, “But Stephano doesn’t have the tattoo.”
> 
> “ **Tocksin** ,” Solitude added, which probably meant, “And Dr. Lucafont found the venom of the Mamba du Mal in Uncle Monty’s veins.”

“Notat” sounds like the words “ **no tattoo**.” “Tocksin” is a misspelling of the word “ **toxin** ,” or poison.

> Violet turned her attention to Solitude and Sunny. “Sunny, watch the door and bite anyone who tries to get in. Solitude, find the Mamba du Mal and make sure it’s accounted for. Try to see if its fangs match up to the bite marks on Uncle Monty.”
> 
> “ **Ackroid**!” said Sunny, who was already crawling toward the door.

**_The Murder of Roger Ackroyd_** is a murder mystery by Agatha Christie. Sunny saying “Ackroid,” which was taken from _The Reptile Room_ , is a reference to the Baudelaires solving Uncle Monty’s murder, and the term “Roger,” which means that a message has been received and understood.

* * *

**Chapter Fifteen: “This Is Like Finding A Needle In A Haystack”**

> “Find anything?” Klaus asked her.
> 
> “ **Cantell** ,” she said, which probably meant, “It’s impossible to determine if the Mamba du Mal’s fangs match the bite marks on Uncle Monty’s face.”

“Cantell” is the phrase “ **can’t tell** ” combined into one word.

> “ **Fib** ,” Solitude said, which probably meant, “Dr. Lucafont must be working with Stephano. Of course he would say something like that.”

A fib is a **harmless white lie**.

> “He’s the assistant to a _herpetologist_!”
> 
> “Well, I don’t know about **mouth sores** ,” said Mr. Poe.

**Herpes** is an STI that can cause cold sores and fever blisters around the mouth. In “The Reptile Room: Part One,” Stephano thought that herpetologists studied herpes, not snakes.

> “You’re wasting your time,” Violet said, opening the door. “ **You could be letting a murderer go free.** ”

The central question of _Why Is This Night Different From All Other Nights?_  is “Is it more beastly to be a murderer or to **let one go free**?”

> “L., is your name Violet?”
> 
> She had pushed him away. “ **I hate it when you call me L.!** ”

**Lemony also hated it** when Kit called him L.

> “ **Mianhae** ,” she said, which probably meant, “Sorry, but you told me to bite anyone who tries to come inside.”

“Mianhae” (미안해) means “ **I’m sorry** ” in Korean.

> “You mean I could have been making a distraction this whole time instead of reading about snakes?” Nick said. “You could have told me earlier! ‘Distraction’ is my middle name.”
> 
> “No, Nick,” said Klaus. “Your middle name is **Liam**.”

**Liam Aiken** played Klaus in the 2004 movie.

> “Now,” Nick told her, “scream like you did when you found Uncle Monty.”
> 
> She shook her head. “ **Dontwanna**.”

“Dontwanna” is the phrase “ **don’t want to** ” combined into one word.

> “Think of something scary,” Klaus said. “Like the basilisk in the **Chamber of Secrets**.”
> 
> “ **Plithiver** ,” she said, which probably meant, “But the basilisk isn’t scary, he’s just misunderstood.”

The basilisk is a huge snake in **_Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets_**. Horace Plithiver, on the other hand, is a **kindly snake** in the _Guardians of Ga’Hoole_ book series.

> “ **Shrek** ,” she said, which probably meant, “Take Ink to the swamp.”

The title character in the movie _Shrek_ lives in a **swamp**.

* * *

**Chapter Sixteen: “There’s Someone Watching Over Us”**

> “ **Deus** ,” she whispered in wonder, which probably meant, “I can’t believe those taxi-driving librarians have returned, and I can’t believe they drove through shrubbery just to get the Incredibly Deadly Viper.”

“Deus” means “ **god** ” in Latin. **Deus ex machina** , a literary device in which an unexpected power or event (such as the arrival of a god or the Bellerophons) saves the hero from a seemingly hopeless situation, is also mentioned in _The Vile Village_.

> But a **woman** , not the taxi-driving librarians, climbed out of the driver’s seat. Her hair was tied up in a bun that had two pencils sticking out of it at odd angles, and her eyes looked exhausted beneath her gold-rimmed spectacles.

Yeah, that’s **Kit Snicket**.

> “ **Atascado** ,” Sunny said, which probably meant, “Stuck in the Reptile Room, under the watch of a bearded assistant with a dubious degree in herpetology. The Incredibly Deadly Viper is the only one were only able to sneak out.”

“Atascado” means “ **stuck** ” in Spanish.

> “ **Denouement**?” Sunny asked, which probably meant, “Are you taking Ink to a safe place?”

A reference to the Hotel Denouement, which is also known as the **Last Safe Place**.

> “Baby?”
> 
> She put a hand on her belly. “She’s not due for a while, but would you like to see her?”
> 
> The woman got up. She opened the glove compartment of the taxi and started searching for something inside it.
> 
> “My first ultrasound was done a little while ago. **I can show you a picture, if you’d—** ”

One of the coded phrases used for V.F.D. recruitment is the volunteer **showing someone a picture of their baby**. Kit was trying to recruit Sunny into V.F.D.

> Sunny patted the woman’s boot. “ **Neindanke** ,” she said, which probably meant, “No, thank you.”
> 
> “Are you sure?” the woman said, looking down at Sunny. “This is what your parents would have wanted, you know.”
> 
> “ **Propagan** ,” Sunny replied, which probably meant, “Actually, I don’t think it is.”

“Neindanke” means “ **no thank you** ” in German. “Propagan” is the beginning of the word “ **propaganda** ,” which is misinformation spread to promote a particular point of view.

> “ **Lodestone** ,” Sunny said, which probably meant, “I’ll find my way back on my own.”

A lodestone is a stone that can be used as a magnet; sailors used to use lodestones to **navigate**.

> The taxi sped off through the grass, narrowly missing several small birds and a **very frightened dormouse**.

A **V.F.D.** reference.

> “That’s right,” said Count Olaf, a murderous look on his face. “I killed Gustav. But that’s **small potatoes** compared to what I’ll do to you, orphans. You’ve won this round of the game, but I will return for your fortune, and for your precious skin.”

The figurative phrase “ **small potatoes** ” is defined in _The Vile Village_.

> “ **Silver lining** ,” Sunny said, which probably meant, “At least the Incredibly Deadly Viper is safe.”

“Every cloud has a silver lining” is an expression meaning that there is a **positive aspect to every bad situation**.

> “I remember her holding me and singing a lullaby. I think I was a baby.”
> 
> “What was the lullaby?” Lilac asked.
> 
> “I don’t remember the words exactly. Something about a **midnight snack**?”

The lyrics to “ **The Little Snicket Lad** ” include the lines “They took him from the kitchen / like you’d take a midnight snack.” Totally not worrying at all that Josephine sang Violet a song about kidnapping a baby.

* * *

**Chapter Seventeen: “Nothing Will Go Wrong This Time”**

> “Who taught you how to do that?” Klaus asked.
> 
> “Uncle Monty did, that evening after the movies,” Colin replied. “He was surprisingly cool. He told me that **Mother had taught him how to throw darts** , among other things, when they were both children.”
> 
> “Wow,” said Klaus. “It’s hard to imagine Uncle Monty being—”
> 
> “ **Sporty**?”

Beatrice would know how to throw darts because **she used them to assassinate Count Olaf’s parents**. “Sporty” is kind of a joke within the fandom, since Barry Sonnenfeld, the director of the Netflix show, used the word “ **sporty** ” to describe Kit Snicket, who is definitely not sporty.

> “I was able to copy the design of a poison dart that Nick and I found in the swamp behind Uncle Monty’s house,” she explained. “I couldn’t replicate the poison, though. It’s made of **some sort of ground-up bone from an animal that doesn’t live around here**.”

The poison in **Hangfire’s darts** in _All the Wrong Questions_ was made from the ground-up bones of birds that had been trapped in the Clusterous Forest, tying into the theory that Hangfire’s poison darts were also used by V.F.D.

> She waved down a taxi, and in no time at all, the cab drivers— **for there were two of them, one steering the wheel and one operating the pedals** —piled all of the Baudelaire suitcases into the trunk and, with greater difficulty, all of the Baudelaires into the taxi.

Another appearance from **Pip and Squeak Bellerophon**.

> “ **Titanic** ,” Solitude said, which probably meant, “The lake is so enormous.”
> 
> “ **Verne** ,” Sunny said, which probably meant, “And it looks so deep.”

“Titanic” means “of exceptional strength, size, or power.” It’s also the name of an **enormous ship** that famously sank when it hit an iceberg. Jules Verne was a French author who wrote the novel **_Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea_**.

> “ **Do you children have a tip?** ”
> 
> Klaus thought hard. “There’s a series of four books,” he said, “about a town very similar to this one—old, abandoned, and near a large body of water, although the townspeople in these books drained their sea. There’s a taxi in it, and a library. I think you’d like it.”

In _All the Wrong Questions_ , **the Bellerophons accept tips in the form of book recommendations**. The book series that Klaus recommended to them is **_All the Wrong Questions_** , and the town is Stain’d-by-the-Sea.

> “Nick!” Aunt Josephine shouted in alarm. She rushed into the kitchen, where Nick was staring blankly at the wall.
> 
> “What are you doing?”
> 
> Nick shrugged. “ **Dissociating in front of the fridge.** ”

There’s a scene in the 2004 movie where **Klaus is just standing in front of Aunt Josephine’s fridge** for no discernible reason. What an icon.

* * *

**Chapter Eighteen: “We’re Lucky That She’s Our Guardian”**

> “ **Phobia** ,” Sunny mumbled, which probably meant, “Get her help.”

A **phobia** is an extreme or irrational fear.

> Violet started to flip through the album. **With each turn of a page, the Baudelaire children saw more and more curious things.** Aunt Josephine holding a slingshot. Aunt Josephine standing next to a pockmarked dartboard and biting into an apple. Aunt Josephine dressed for a masquerade, picking a lock, a snake wrapped around her arm. Aunt Josephine lighting a match. Aunt Josephine aiming a harpoon gun at something high, high up in the sky. And Aunt Josephine peering into a very familiar device.
> 
> “That’s the spyglass,” said Colin.

**The photographs of Aunt Josephine correspond to each of the nine Baudelaires.** There’s the slingshot (Violet), the dartboard (Lilac), the apple (Sunny), the masquerade (April), the lockpick (Klaus), the snake (Solitude), the match (Sensible), the harpoon gun (Nick), and the spyglass (Colin).

> “I recognize that man,” Violet said, pointing at a thin man in a bowler hat. “ **His name was Jake—no, Jack—** ”

The man was **Jacques Snicket** , whose name Violet recognizes in _The Vile Village_. The Snickets’ father, Jacob Snicket, is also erroneously referred to as **Jake** in “The Little Snicket Lad.”

> “ **Kayess** ,” Sunny said, which probably meant, “I recognize that woman, too. She took Ink from me near the Swarthy Swamp.”

“Kayess” is a phonetic spelling of the initials K.S., which stand for **Kit Snicket**.

> “ **Schema**?” Solitude asked, which probably meant, “Where are you taking me?”

A schematic is a type of **diagram**. It’s also a similar word to “ **scheme** ,” which is a systematic plan.

> “I guess we’re lucky that she’s our guardian,” said Violet.
> 
> “ **Limbo**!” Sunny shrieked, which probably meant, “The bar is very low.”

Limbo is a **game** in which a person bends backward to pass under a horizontal bar that is progressively lowered to the ground.

> “ **Inconceivable**!” Solitude shrieked, which probably meant, “Let me get this straight. Aunt Josephine made a grammatical error?”

“Inconceivable” is a word meaning “ **unbelievable**.” It’s also a reference to **_The Princess Bride_** , in which the character Vizzini repeatedly says, “Inconceivable!”

> “ **Vid**!” Solitude said, which probably meant, “Well spotted!”

“Vid” is a shortened form of “videre,” which means “ **to see** ” in Latin.

> Solitude took out one of the documents, which was a page of sheet music.
> 
> “Beethoven.”
> 
> “ **Plait woven**?”
> 
> Solitude gave April an unimpressed look.

A reference to **Beethoven**.

> “ **Duchess Of Winnipeg Is Deaf** ,” she read out loud from the newspaper headline. “That’s an odd bit of news. It’s dated from over sixteen years ago.”
> 
> She turned her attention to the sheet of paper. It was a letter scrawled in untidy handwriting, little more than a note. The letter read:
> 
> Josephine:  
>  **Stay away from open windows.  
> ** **Avoid suspicious foods in restaurants.  
>  ** **Check carefully under the bed.  
>  **And look inside your spyglass.

  


The newspaper article was mentioned in L.S. to B.B. #3 of _The Beatrice Letters_ , and referred to **the death of R.’s mother**. R.’s letter to Josephine is also a reference to L.S. to B.B. #3, in which Lemony writes, “We should **stay away from open windows** , even if we are outdoors, and **check carefully under the bed** , even if no one is sleeping in it. You should **avoid suspicious foods in restaurants** , particularly if they are the specialty of the house, and I should only sit on certain benches in the park when I read the sonnets you send me.”

* * *

**Chapter Nineteen: “I’m Just Afraid That Something Terrible Will Happen”**

> Suddenly, there was a loud clattering noise. A man wearing a sailor’s clothing had fallen into a melon cart, and now watermelons, cantaloupes, and **honeydews** were rolling everywhere.

Lemony goes on a rant about the pointlessness of **honeydew melons** in _When Did You See Her Last?_.

> “Here,” Captain Sham said, pulling a small card out of his pocket and handing it to Aunt Josephine. “Take my business card, and next time you’re in town, perhaps we could enjoy a cup of **tea with sugar**.”

A reference to the **sugar bowl**. If a person takes their tea with sugar, that’s a sign that they’re a firestarter.

* * *

**Chapter Twenty: “I Used To Be A Fierce And Formidable Woman”**

> “ **Tulate** ,” Solitude remarked glumly, which probably meant, “Although we still didn’t save Uncle Monty.”

“Tulate” sounds like the phrase “ **too late**.”

> “ **Usher** ,” Sunny said, which probably meant, “Or maybe he hopes the house will collapse during Hurricane Herman.”
> 
> “ **Hirudinea**!” Solitude said, which probably meant, “Maybe he wants to put the Lachrymose Leeches in our beds.”

“ **The Fall of the House of Usher** ” is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe in which a mansion collapses into a lake. _Hirudinea_ is a scientific subclass that includes **leeches**.

> “ **Capire** ,” said Solitude, which probably meant, “But I don’t understand. How will going on a date with Aunt Josephine help Captain Sham get our fortune?”

“Capire” means “ **to understand** ” in Italian.

> “ **Confound** ,” Sunny said, which probably meant, “Then what can we do?”

“Confound” is a word meaning “ **to confuse**.” It also used to be used as a mild swear.

* * *

**Chapter Twenty-One: “The World Is Scary And We Should Be Afraid”**

> “ **Leep**!” Sunny shrieked, which probably meant, “Captain Sham threw Aunt Josephine out the window and then wrote this note to hide his crime. What a terrible thing to do!”

“Leep” is a misspelling of the word “ **leap** ,” taken from _The Wide Window_.

* * *

**Chapter Twenty-Two: “The Surrounding Area Has Been Flooded”**

> “What fortune?” Captain Sham asked. “I don't know anything about a fortune.”
> 
> “ **Perjure**!” Sunny shrieked, which probably meant, “Of course you do!”

Perjury is when someone willfully **tells a lie** in court.

> Klaus held up the note. He had written two words at the bottom. “Curdled Cave.”
> 
> “ **Paneer**?” Sunny asked, which probably meant, “Curdled _what_?”

Paneer is a type of Indian **curd cheese**.

> “Stay away from open windows,” April read aloud.
> 
> “ **Ventana** ,” Solitude said, which probably meant, “That’s why we didn’t climb out the window.”
> 
> “Avoid suspicious foods in restaurants,” April went on.
> 
> “ **Kloun** ,” Solitude said, which probably meant, “That’s why we didn’t order the Extra Fun Special Family Appetizer.”

“Ventana” means “ **window** ” in Spanish, and “kloun” (клоун) means “ **clown** ” in Russian.

> Nick flipped to the index and ran his finger down the list of the C words. “Carp Cove, Chartreuse Island, Cloudy Cliffs, Condiment Bay, Curdled Cave—here it is! Curdled Cave, page **551**.”

In the **Dewey Decimal System** , the section for physical and dynamic geology is 551.

* * *

**Chapter Twenty-Three: “Doesn’t This Day Just Keep Getting Better?”**

> “I don’t know how we can,” Nick said. “The atlas says that the cave is all the way across the lake, and we can’t swim all that way in this weather.”
> 
> “ **Entro**!” Sunny shrieked, which probably meant, “And we don’t have enough time to walk around the lake, either.”

“Entro,” which was taken from _The Wide Window_ , means “ **within** ” in Italian.

> “ **Shomer** ,” she told her sisters, which probably meant, “One of Count Olaf’s associates is in the shack.”
> 
> “Which one?” Sensible asked.
> 
> “ **Keith** ,” Sunny said, which probably meant, “The one of indeterminate gender. They’re asleep and holding a ring of keys.”
> 
> “We’ll need those keys to unlock the gate and get a sailboat,” Sensible said.
> 
> “ **Robber**?” Solitude said, which probably meant, “You mean we’re going to steal a sailboat?”

A shomer is someone who is, according to Jewish religious law, tasked with **guarding another’s property or goods**. In the Netflix show _Stranger Things_ , Matty Cardarople, who played the henchperson of indeterminate gender, plays a character named **Keith**. A robber is a person who **steals**.

> “I feel rather bad for them,” April said, looking down at the henchperson’s sleeping figure. “ **I wonder if they ever question their life choices.** ”

In “The Slippery Slope: Part Two,” the henchperson of indeterminate gender says that **they’re beginning to question their life choices**.

> “I can’t make heads or tails of this map,” Nick said, squinting at the damp pages of the atlas. “We could really use a **graphologist**.”
> 
> “I think you mean a **cartographer**.”

A graphologist, which is **a person who studies handwriting** , is one of the words defined in _The Wide Window_. **Quigley Quagmire** is a cartographer, and he’s missing at the moment that the Baudelaires could really use one.

* * *

**Chapter Twenty-Four: “There’s Nothing At All You Can Do”**

> “ **Newitt** ,” Sunny mumbled to herself, which probably meant, “I knew our parents wouldn’t have wanted me to leave with that the woman in the taxi.”

“Newitt” sounds like the phrase “ **knew it**.”

> “It wasn’t meant to be,” Aunt Josephine went on. “Not long after this article was published, your mother had to make a **vastly frightening decision**. I remember that day so well. I proofread the **two hundred-page letter** she sent to—”

“Vastly frightening decision” is a **V.F.D. reference** , taken from “The Wide Window: Part Two.” The two hundred-page letter is **Beatrice’s breakup letter** to Lemony.

> Sunny had bitten his peg leg as hard as she could, and the leg split right in half to reveal Captain Sham’s real leg.
> 
> “ **Gordium** ,” Sunny said proudly, pointing at the eye tattoo on Count Olaf’s ankle.

In _The Wide Window_ , Sunny’s reveal of Count Olaf is preceded by a Lemony Aside™ about how Alexander the Great cut through an impossible knot called the **Gordian Knot**.

> “I’m tired,” she whispered, barely louder than the sound of the sea. “ **I’m _tired_ , and I want to go to bed.**”

A lyric from the song “ **Asleep** ” by Emily Browning, who played Violet in the 2004 movie.

* * *

**Chapter Twenty-Five: “We’re Almost Out Of The Woods”**

> “If anything goes wrong with you here, **I’ll have to send you to boarding school like those twins did** , so please be on your best behavior.”

A reference to **Duncan and Isadora Quagmire** , who are often erroneously referred to as twins, being sent to Prufrock Prep.

> Mr. Poe took a piece of paper out of his pocket and squinted at it. “His name is Mr. Wuz—Mr. Qui—I can’t pronounce it. It’s very long and complicated.”
> 
> “That’s not long and complicated,” Klaus said, peeking at Mr. Poe’s piece of paper. “ **It’s two simple words.** ”
> 
> “No, no,” Mr. Poe said, putting the paper away. “If it’s too complicated for an adult, it’s much too complicated for a child.”
> 
> “ **Tolstoi**!” Sunny shrieked from Lilac’s lap, which probably meant, “But Klaus reads many complicated books!”

This ties into the theory that Sir’s real name is **Smogface Wiley** , the name of a character in the case “Silver Spoon” in _File Under: 13 Suspicious Incidents_. “ **Tolstoi** ” is an alternate spelling of the surname of **Leo Tolstoy** , a Russian author known for writing _War and Peace_ and _Anna Karenina_.

> “Wait a second.” Colin took the photograph from April and held it up. Behind the smiling Baudelaire parents, in the background of the photographs, were two thin smokestacks spouting two thin columns of **green smoke**. It matched perfectly with the lumbermill in the distance.

A reference to V.F.D.’s **Verdant Flammable Devices**.

> “ **Trebuchet**?” Solitude asked, which probably meant, “How are we going to get inside?”

A trebuchet is a type of medieval **catapult** with a swinging arm.

> “The Baudelaires?” one man said. “I hear their folks were arsonists.”
> 
> “ **I hear they were murderers.** ”
> 
> “I hear they checked out library books and never returned them.”
> 
> “No, **that was that Snicket lad** —what was his name?”

The Baudelaire parents _were_ murderers— **they assassinated Count Olaf’s parents**. In _Shouldn’t You Be In School?_ , Lemony (the “Snicket lad”) checks out a book called _Caviar: Salty Jewel of the Tasty Sea_ from the Stain’d-by-the-Sea library, and **the book ends up being destroyed** before he can return it.

* * *

**Chapter Twenty-Six: “What Goes Around Comes Around”**

> “ **Argent** ,” Solitude said, which probably meant, “We could buy back Uncle Monty’s reptile collection, and take care of all the reptiles.”

“Argent” means “ **money** ” or “silver” in French.

* * *

**Chapter Twenty-Seven: “You Catch More Flies With Honey”**

> He had seen this type of machine several times before, at his annual optometry appointments, and he had read about them enough to know that this device was called a phoropter, but knowing its proper name didn’t dispel the **butterflies in his stomach**.

In _The Vile Village_ , Lemony tells a story about the origin of the term “ **butterflies in your stomach**.” The story involves lepidopterists, x-rays, and bug prison.

> “Well, unless someone else is willing to operate the machine, he’ll have to be the one to do it,” Foreman Flacutono said. “Does anyone **volunteer**?”

A reference to **V.F.D.**

* * *

**Chapter Twenty-Eight: “It’s As If I Were Hypnotized”**

> “ **Heure**?” Solitude asked, which probably meant, “When do you think they’ll notice we’re gone?”
> 
> “Soon,” Sensible replied, helping Sunny crawl up the stairs. “Which is why we have to work fast.”
> 
> “ **Waretu**?” Sunny said, which probably meant, “Where are we going?”

“Heure” means “ **hour** ” in French. “Waretu” sounds like the phrase “ **Where to?** ”

> “ **Basira** ,” Solitude said, which probably meant, “But Dr. Orwell’s an eye doctor. Skeletons don’t even have eyes.”

“Basira” (بصيرة) means “ **vision** ” in Arabic.

> “These are records,” she realized.
> 
> “ **Feint**?” Solitude said, which probably meant, “Any **Duke Ellington**?”

In _All the Wrong Questions_ , **Ellington Feint** owns a record player and music box that plays a tune that’s probably “Solitude” by **Duke Ellington**.

> “ **Veritas**!” Sunny shrieked, which probably meant, “It’s probably why they think our parents started that fire!”

“Veritas” means “ **truth** ” in Latin.

* * *

**Chapter Twenty-Nine: “These Brats Know Lots Of Words”**

> “Chapter Twelve: Hypnosis and Mind Control,” she read. “Page **154**.”

In the **Dewey Decimal System** , the section for subconscious and altered states (such as hypnotism) is 154.

> The children opened the door to the office. Sir was sitting at an enormous desk made of **green wood**.

Based on _The Penultimate Peril_ and _The Beatrice Letters_ , V.F.D. seems to have built their buildings out of **green wood** from Lucky Smells Lumbermill.

> Dr. Orwell laughed. “A toddler and a girl so tired she can barely stand upright? **You can’t defeat me.** ”
> 
> “ **I know** ,” Lilac said. “ **But _she_ can.**”
> 
> Right on cue, Sunny crawled out from hiding and bit Dr. Orwell’s hand.

A reference to a scene in **_Thor: Ragnarok_** that’s become a meme. In the scene, Hela tells Thor, “You can’t defeat me,” and Thor responds, “I know. But _he_ can.” Then Surtur bursts out of the palace and obliterates everyone.

* * *

**Chapter Twenty-Nine: “We’ve Had An Inordinate Amount Of Good Fortune”**

> “Are you scared?”
> 
> Klaus nodded.
> 
> “ **Get scared later** ,” Nick said. “Now lift.”

In _All the Wrong Questions_ , Lemony’s mantra is, “ **Do the scary thing first. Get scared later.** ”

> “ **Haut** ,” she said, which probably meant, “I hate to break it to you, April, but Colin is definitely a couple inches taller.”

“Haut” means “ **tall** ” in French.

> “ _But_ ,” she went on, “the day that Klaus outgrows me—that’s the day I’m moving out. I can’t stick around in a family where I’m in the bottom half regarding height.”
> 
> “ **Serpentes** ,” Solitude said, which probably meant, “Then we’ll find Ink and adopt him, so you won’t be in the bottom half until I outgrow you.”
> 
> “What about Sensible?” Colin asked. “You forgot about her.”
> 
> “ **Court** ,” she said, which probably meant, “Sensible is never going to be taller than April.”
> 
> “Oh, really?” said April. “How do you know?”
> 
> “ **Lulu** ,” Solitude replied, which probably meant, “I can just tell.”

_Serpentes_ is the scientific name for **snakes** , “court” means “ **short** ” in French, and Madame Lulu is a **fortune-teller** in _The Carnivorous Carnival_.

> “That’s very sensible, Sensible,” he said. “We have each other, and that makes us very fortunate indeed.”
> 
> “ **Very fortunate, definitely** ,” Sensible agreed. “Lucky, even.”

A reference to **V.F.D.**

> “Our parents could never have started a fire like that,” April agreed. “Father once told me he thought **a match was a wicked thing.** He wouldn’t have said that if he had burned down an entire town.”
> 
> “ **A match is only as wicked as the person who’s using it** ,” Sensible said. “Maybe Mother and Father thought they were doing the right thing.”

In _Shouldn’t You Be In School?_ , Lemony narrates, “You can’t see it on me, but hidden in the depths of my life is the permanent opinion that **a match is a wicked thing**. This is wrong, of course. It’s nonsense. **A match is only as wicked as the person who is using it.** ”

> “ **Schism**!” Sunny shrieked suddenly, and everyone knew what she meant. She meant, “Stop arguing like this! You’re going to tear our family apart.”

A reference to **V.F.D.’s schism**.


End file.
